But Lewis Hall made no reproaches. Perhaps Athalia missed them;
perhaps, under her spiritual passion, she was piqued that earthly
passion was so readily silenced. But, if she was, she did not know it.
She was entirely sincere and intensely happy in a new experience.
It was a long winter of argument;--and then suddenly, in early April,
the break came. . . .
"I WILL go; I have a right to save my soul!"
And he said, very simply, "Well, Athalia, then I'll go, too."
"You? But you don't believe--" And almost in the Bible words he answered
her, "No; but where you go, I will go; where you live, I will live."
And then, a moment later, "I promised to cleave to you, little Tay."
II
THE uprooting of their life took a surprisingly short time.
In all those dark months of argument Lewis Hall had been quietly
making plans for this final step, and such preparation betrayed
his knowledge from the first of the hopelessness of his struggle--
indeed, the struggle had only been loyalty to a lost cause.
His calm assent to his wife's ultimatum left her a little blank;
but in the immediate excitement of removal, in the thrill of
martyrdom that came with publicity, the blankness did not last.
What the publicity was to her husband she could not understand.
He received the protests of his family in stolid silence;
when the venturesome great-aunt told him what she thought of him,
he smiled; when his brother informed him that he was a fool, he said
he shouldn't wonder.
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