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142 very distinctly, but so low that she could scarcely hear. "I couldn't tell you now—if Ben hadn't gone away as he has and this other fellow come. I couldn't tell you when you wanted to keep caring so much for your Uncle Benny, and he was trying to hurt me with you."

She bent toward him, her lips parted; but now she did not speak. She never had really known Henry until this moment, she felt; she had thought of him always as strong, almost brutal, fighting down fiercely, mercilessly, his opponents and welcoming contest for the joy of overwhelming others by his own decisive strength and power. And she had been almost ready to marry that man for his strength and dominance from those qualities; and now she knew that he was merciful too—indeed, more than merciful. In the very contest where she had thought of him as most selfish and regardless of another, she had most completely misapprehended.

"I ought to have seen!" she rebuked herself to him. "Surely, I should have seen that was it!" Her hand, in the reproach of her feeling, reached toward him across the table; he caught it and held it in his large, strong hand which, in its touch, was very tender too. She had never allowed any such demonstration as this before; but now she let her hand remain in his.

"How could you see?" he defended her. "He never showed to you the side he showed to me and—in these last years, anyway—never to me the side he showed to you. But after what has happened this week, you can understand now; and you can see why I have to distrust the young fellow who's come to claim Ben Covert's place."

"Claim!" Constance repeated; she drew her hand