Montpelier examiner. [volume] (Montpelier, Idaho) 1895-1937, 1906-09-14

AOssoiS 0uu tSlGSTdmb OVer
iistlessly. 1T isn't as though she had
cared he repeated, DULY, opening
ana closing the small drawers, one by
one. He was searching for a photo
grapn that she had kept on her desk
"a kenes taken in her early girl
mood, long before he had met her.
AS he felt clumsily about among
the papers a letter fell out. He start
ed % replace it, but caught sight of
his own name in the familiar writing
n paused. He opened 1t with trem-
bling fingers.
i did the best l could" he said,
slowly to himself. 81 couldn't help
not caring. l thought l could-at
first. l thought 1t would come with
time. God! how hard it has been,
how bitter hard!" He passed his thin,
nervous hand YEARLY across his col
orles face. "At least, she never
knew, suspected, nor cared,
either way" he said, bitterly. "She
was as Indifferent as-as I was"
Il wonder If she knows now," he
breathed. Il wonder If she knows
and understands. She never seemed
to understand anything. / used to
wonder how anyone could feel SO lit
tie and live. / tried once to tell her
how ! felt and she laughed. Said
! needed something to tone me up.
Perhaps she was right. Perhaps I
am a morbid chap.
If she had cared" he began again,
Il would have tried to be different.
should have learned to get hold of
her interest in some way, but that
dead calm of hers! l used to think
1t would drive me crazy. She was
the right sort, too-or seemed to be-.
With her possibilities she might have
developed into a wonderful woman
under the right conditions. She is
w~onderful-she was" he corrected
himself, shuddering at the correction.
Il admired her more than any other
woman l eve met. Poor Helen!"
he sighed as he pored over the letter
in the failing light.
He sat up, startled. Hurried to
the window, reading eagerly with a
look of intense interest on his rather
a%pathetic face-a look such as Helen
Atherton had never reused in all her
sadly i~nconsequent life with him.
Dear" he. read, Il couldn't hope
ever to make you understand how I
love you. You have just left me-
cold, unloving, careless, as you always
are-and l (poor foolish, loving thing)
put my starved arms about your chair
and laid my lips p~assionately against
the spot where your dear head has
lain. / know it is utterly unrecipro-
Gated, that | shall never be more to
you than l am now, and though it
breaks my heart with it's desolation,
its utter despair, yet I bow to 1t.
Dearest, no man was eve loved more
deeply, more tenderly, than you are.
o, the sadness, the heartbreak of it
ALI
You thought at first you cared. II
you had been sure, then-ah, If you
had only known then-and told me.
Now it is too late. I am wrapped in
a ne~ver-ending regret that will be
my portion to the end of time. I
can't ease the hurt of loving unloved.
81 want you to know II you are left
and you will be-that l have always
cared. I used to hope for the day
when 1 should Sc your eyes flood with
gladness at my coming. I have
learned to welcome w the weari-
ness of spirit they express IL only l
may feel you near me.
Dear, I know how it is with you.
| r I--u, 4hck Az A--lc Lo..1 ~---
SO irksome that they have worn into
your very soul. I see the d~istaste,
the dislike-almost loathing-that pos.
sesses you at times. | see 1t all, yet
l am powerless to release you. I can
only hide it all securely away under
the slow smile, the smile that you
call my everyday face.
IF you had cared, John, we should
have been very happy. I love your
work, your interests, but / have not
dared voice it for fear-O that look!
that cruelty Indifferent, hard. careless
looki 1t burns into me as / write
and I writhe under the torture of it."
He a with his head on his arms
for hours. Once he cried out In
agony: my God. If l had known!
If / had known!"
At last he climbed the heavy, dark
stairway to the room above to face
his dead. He turned back the white
coverlid with hands strangely steady
after his long vigil.
Her face was oddly girlish as II
was in the little photo. He felt a vast
tenderness yelling up within him as
he looked. A rush of feeling that
flooded him with longing. longing fol-
hsr smile, for her clear-eyed look, for
the spirit of her, brave and indomita,
BILE as it had aver been. At last he
knew the truth. He could see the
soul back of the silence-back of her
apathetic %gentleness of demeanor that
had shamed his churlish outbreaks OF
fr~ritability. Oh, to tell her! to lei