Apostle Paul."
When the shaken wits of the parents began to return to a partial
calm they remembered that Kedzie had mentioned somebody named
Gilfoyle--_Gargoyle_ would have been a better name for him,
since he grinned down in mockery upon a cathedral of hope.
Adna whispered, "When did you divorce--the other feller?"
"I didn't; that's the trouble."
"Why don't you?"
"I can't find him."
Adna spoke up: "I'll go to Chicago and find him and get a divorce,
if I have to pound it out of him. You say he's a poet?"
Adna had the theory that poetry went with tatting and china-painting
as an athletic exercise. Kedzie had no reason to think differently.
She had whipped her own poet, scratched him and driven him away in
disorder. She told her people of this and of her inability to recall
him, and of his failure to answer the letter she had sent to Chicago.
Her father and mother grew incandescent with the strain between the
obstacle and the opportunity--the irresistible opportunity chained
to the immovable obstacle. They raged against the fiend who had
ruined Kedzie's life, met her on her pathway, gagged and bound her,
and haled her to his lair.
Poor young Gilfoyle would have been flattered at the importance they
gave him, but he would not have recognized himself or Kedzie.
According to his memory, he had married Kedzie because she was a
pitiful, heartbroken waif who had lost her job and thrown herself
on his mercy. He had married her because he adored her and he wanted
to protect her and love her under the hallowing shelter of matrimony.
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