She remembered the best
of him, and he came back to her for a while as the poet who had
made her his muse--the only one she could telegraph to when she
returned to New York alone, her first and only husband.
She was afraid that she belittled herself in Dyckman's eyes when
she let slip the remorseful Wail, "I wish I had been kinder to
the poor boy!"
But she did not belittle herself in any such tendernesses of regret.
She endeared herself by her grief, her self-reproach, her childish
humility before the power of death. Her tears were beautiful in Jim's
sight. But it is the blessing and the shame of tears that they cure
the grief that causes them. At first they bleed and burn; then they
flow soft and cool. They cleanse and brighten the eyes and even wash
away the cinders from the funeral smoke.
Dyckman's heart was drawn out of him toward Kedzie and his arms
held her shaken body devotedly. But at length she ceased to weep,
and a last long sob became dangerously like a sigh of relief. She
smiled through the rain and apologized for weeping, when she should
have apologized for stopping weeping. Then Dyckman's love of her
seemed to withdraw backward into his heart. And his arms suddenly
wearied of clasping her.
When she had seemed hardly to know that he was there he felt
necessary and justified. When she took comfort in his arms and
held them about her he felt ashamed, revolted, profane.
Mrs. Thropp had wept a little in sympathy with Kedzie, and Adna
had looked amiably disconsolate; but by and by Mrs.
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