Page:A Good Woman (1927).pdf/142

 disappear to-morrow and the world would go on just the same. That's one thing about the Flats. . . . Down there you get down to brass tacks. You know how little all the hubbub really means."

"Do people know how you feel?"

"No, they just think I'm a little mad. I've never told any one any of this, Mary, until now."

She looked at him shyly. "Your blue shirt suits you better than your black clothes, Philip. I always thought you weren't made for a preacher."

He blushed. "Perhaps . . . anyway, I feel natural in the blue shirt." He halted again. "You know, Mary, it's been the queerest thing—the whole business. It's as if I never really existed before. It's like being born again—it's painful and awful."

They were quite clear of the Town now. It had sunk down behind the rolling hills. They sat down side by side presently on the stone wall of the bridge that crossed the brook. The water here was clear and clean. It turned to oil further on, after it had passed through the Flats. For a time they sat in silence, watching the sun slipping down behind the distant woods that crowned Trimble's Hill. In the far distance the valley had turned misty and blue.

Presently Mary sighed suddenly, and asked, "And your wife? What's to be done about her? She's a missionary, too, and she still believes, doesn't she?"

A shadow crossed Philip's face. "Yes, that's the trouble. It's made such an awful mess. She's always lived out there. She's never known any other life, and she doesn't know how to get on here. That's the trouble. Sometimes I think she ought to go back . . . alone, without me. She'd be happier there." 