Hugh's experience with the school teacher was repeated on that second night
in the farmhouse. He took off his shoes and prepared for bed. Then he crept
out into the hallway and went softly to the door of Clara's room. Several
times he made the journey along the carpeted hallway, and once his hand was
on the knob of the door, but each time he lost heart and returned to his
own room. Although he did not know it Clara, like Rose McCoy on that other
occasion, expected him to come to her, and knelt on the floor just inside
the door, waiting, hoping for, and fearing the coming of the man.
Unlike the school teacher, Clara wanted to help Hugh. Marriage had perhaps
given her that impulse, but she did not follow it, and when at last Hugh,
shaken and ashamed, gave up the struggle with himself, she arose and went
to her bed where she threw herself down and wept, as Hugh had wept standing
in the darkness of the fields on the night before.
CHAPTER XX
It was a hot, dusty day, a week after Hugh's marriage to Clara, and Hugh
was at work in his shop at Bidwell. How many days, weeks, and months he
had already worked there, thinking in iron--twisted, turned, tortured to
follow the twistings and turnings of his mind--standing all day by a bench
beside other workmen--before him always the little piles of wheels, strips
of unworked iron and steel, blocks of wood, the paraphernalia of the
inventor's trade.
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