Page:Tongues of Flame (1924).pdf/288

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this groping misconception of the well-meaning little teacher of an Indian school. They are not breaking him. Only he can break himself. I want to save him, and that's why I don't interfere. I've tried to get him to see, and I can't. Father's tried to get him to see, and he can't. What is there to do," she appealed, with a mournful cadence in her tone, "but let events teach him the lesson he won't learn otherwise?"

Lahleet was dazed. Such a point of view was not in her book. "But—he is suffering," she reminded.

Billie shivered. It was easy to see that it hurt her to think of Henry suffering, but she shook her head. "For what he has made us suffer he deserves to be punished—mentally, you know—the only way, of course, that he ever will be punished," she explained. "When he has been punished enough he will change, become the old Henry once more—and then father—well, father is very terrible in his hatreds—but he can be merciful. Whenever Henry gives up this stubborn determination of his, father will at once find a way, I have no doubt, to save him, for all his rashness. But until then——"

Lahleet was glimpsing mental processes she could not understand, that her elemental nature could not brook. She moved restlessly in her chair. She felt herself ready to fly to pieces; yet the idea came clear to her again that this absurdly reasoning, ridiculously self-pitying young woman had it in her power to save Henry and that he must be saved now. "Oh, Miss Boland," she implored, trying to melt her down, "Mr. Harrington is wretched, desperate, put upon. Let me assure you that matters for him have got beyond any question of right courses and wrong courses. The pressure must