Page:The Father Confessor, Stories of Danger and Death.djvu/35

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"Now the grim humour of circumstances willed it for the man that he should not be among those people who whirled past him from city to city, whose quiet, uneventful lives brought no strain upon their physical courage, who went without danger from place to place protected by civilization. Who knows but that among the crowd who looked from the flashing windows of the train there might not have been many who chafed the bit of social monotony and pined for this man’s freedom?

"Soon he saw in the eyes of his wife, as they bent upon him, looks of unquiet, or was it of fear? Did she suspect his secret? Was she afraid that he was afraid? Why should she suspect him? He had a retrospective five minutes. Yes, once when they were walking across the fields a great bull ran at the man; he had turned and fled, but the woman was beside him. Had he not shown he knew this? Had he not looked to her first and kept between her and the bull? He could not remember. He never could remember after his fits of terror. When he was a child they bore him along in one great gust, blinding, deafening, maddening for the time. Now the