Page:Man's Country (1923).pdf/301

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some far corner of the world where your business concerns cannot claim you—can scarcely reach you. Do you get the significance of that, Mr. Judson? These dreams reveal a devotion to you that is pathetic, a fear of the motor works as a rival for your affections that is tragic. She wanted to get you away from it. That deep want—"

"But that is where she was so unreasonable," broke in George, a trifle irritated at all this bearing down upon a demand for the impossible.

"Unreasonable, but not incomprehensible," declared the doctor, with significant emphasis. "There's the pity of it. She knew it was unreasonable and conceded it, yet her wish-nature would not be denied, and it devised all these fantastic projects one after another, that had as their primary impulse, though she never realized it herself, this passionate desire to have you secure for herself for all her life. Every dream, every absurd proposal to travel—every burst of tears or outbreak of hysteria—or long period of depression following one of your refusals—whether harsh or gentle—was either an expression of her love or a bitter mourning for its fancied loss."

A sad, worshipful light began to burn in the husband's eyes, and a slow conviction of guilt to dawn in his mind, the awful guilt of blindness. "Is that what it meant?" he murmured in an