It was only Ruth who still, gravely but kindly enough,
disapproved of his presence.
One day she came and sat with him as he smoked his after-dinner
pipe, leaning against an overturned boat, with his eyes fixed
upon that line of gray breakers.
"You spend a good deal of your time thinking, Mr. Tavernake," she
remarked quietly.
"Too much," he admitted at once, "too much, Miss Nicholls. I
should be better employed planing down that mast there."
"You know that I did not mean that," she said, reprovingly, "only
sometimes you make me--shall I confess it?--almost angry with
you."
He took his pipe from his mouth and knocked out the ashes. As
they fell on the ground so he looked at them.
"All thought is wasted time," he declared, grimly, "all thought
of the past. The past is like those ashes; it is dead and
finished."
She shook her head.
"Not always," she replied. "Sometimes the past comes to life
again. Sometimes the bravest of us quit the fight too soon."
He looked at her questioningly, almost fiercely. Her words,
however, seemed spoken without intent.
"So far as mine is concerned," he pronounced, "it is finished.
There is a memorial stone laid upon it, and no resurrection is
possible."
"You cannot tell," she answered. "No one can tell."
He turned back to his work almost rudely, but she stayed by his
side.
"Once," she remarked, reflectively, "I, too, went a little way
into the world. I was a school-teacher at Norwich.
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