When they reached the door, he held out his hand, the first time
he ever had done it to her, and then waited, patting her on the
head.
"I think it'll come right, Lois," he said, dreamily, looking out
into the night. "You're a good girl. I think it'll all come
right. For you and me. Some time. Good-night, child."
After he was a long way down the street, he turned to nod
good-night again to the comical little figure in the door-way.
CHAPTER IX.
If Knowles hated anybody that night, he hated the man he had left
standing there with pale, heavy jaws, and heart of iron; he could
have cursed him, standing there. He did not see how, after he
was left alone, the man lay with his face to the wall, holding
his bony hand to his forehead, with a look in his eyes that if
you had seen, you would have thought his soul had entered on that
path whose steps take hold on hell.
There was no struggle in his face; whatever was the resolve he
had reached in the solitary hours when he had stood so close upon
the borders of death, it was unshaken now; but the heart, crushed
and stifled before, was taking its dire revenge. If ever it had
hungered, through the cold, selfish days, for God's help, or a
woman's love, it hungered now, with a craving like death. If
ever he had thought how bare and vacant the years would be, going
down to the grave with lips that never had known a true wife's
kiss, he remembered it now, when it was too late, with bitterness
such as wrings a man's heart but once in a lifetime.
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