Page:Held to Answer (1916).pdf/499

 But at half-past three he saw clearly that his intended course was wrong, that he should defend himself and speak the truth: that his silence was working greater ill than good.

The clock tinkled four with this decision still clear in his mind. But the tinkling sound appeared to ring another bell deep inside him—a bell that boomed from far, far away and made him think of some one's definition of religion, "as a power within us not ourselves that makes for godliness." That power had spoken out. It revived the decision of half-past three. His former course was right. He must not swerve. With a gesture of pain and terror he flung up his hands to his brow. The calamity had fallen. His mind was passing under a fog. Defiantly he tried auto-suggestion to school his will against a possible reversal in the hour of trial, saying to himself over and over again: "I will stand! I will stand! I will stand!" He quoted frequently the words of Paul: "And having done all, to stand!"

At length he fell back limply in his chair. A vast irksomeness had taken possession of him. He was tired—tired of thinking of It—tired of waiting for It to come. Why didn't the clock hurry? The coming of Tayna to the study alone brought a welcome to his eye. Tayna! So full of buoyant, blooming youth; so quickly moved to tears of sympathy; so lightly kindled to smiling, happy laughter! Tayna, her melting eyes, her red cheeks, her one intermittent dimple, who flung her long arms about her uncle and held him close and silently as if he had been a lover!

But it was only a moment until Tayna too irked the tortured man. The touch of her cheek upon his cheek and the aggressive mingling of her thick braids with his own disheveled locks, once brushed so neat and high, now so apt to loop disconsolate upon his temples, reminded him