It was a day when men worked in sweat and swift weariness. David Herrick well knew the burden of labor on such a day. How he used to work himself, unsparingly, brutally because of the belief bred in him, that labor and hardship for their own sake were good for his soul!
This heat, slapping in through his screened window, struck his cheek with a challenge which the ceaselessly whirling fan could not cool; it inquired of David Herrick how much of principle had been involved in his denials of self-indulgence, how much they had been merely a result of necessity.
Here in the heat and the glare, he suddenly thought, oppositely, of night darkness and cold; he thought how, with Alice in her car stopped at the edge of the graveyard, he had declared he would cease to sacrifice his opportunities for pleasure on this earth for the sake of laying up uncertain treasures in heaven.
The graveyard that night and the snow and the dark and the storm over the lake had not reproached him as now did this afternoon glare and heat over his homeland.
Fidelia took off her hat; the porter brought a paper bag to protect it and put it upon the rack overhead. David pulled lower the heavy green window-curtain, as the sun got around to the side of the car; and Fidelia leaned back her head comfortably and dozed. Now and then, as an air current or a lurch of the car puffed in the curtain, a streak of sun shone on her hair and made it glorious; and David, watching her, felt his throat close and choke. How lovely she was and how sweet and docile, always! How she
