He could
smile at the impossibility of that recurring, but he could not smile
at the necessity of living within gunshot of her again. He was not
afraid. There was no reason to be afraid. He was officially dead. No
sense of sin troubled him. He had put all that behind him. It was
simply a distaste for living near a woman he had once loved, with
another whom he loved with all the passion he had once lavished on
Myra, and something that was truer and tenderer. He wanted to shut the
doors on the past forever. That was why he did not wish to go back to
the Toba. He only succeeded in clearly defining that feeling when it
seemed that he must go--unless this prospective sale went
through--because he had to use whatever lever stood nearest his hand.
He had a direct responsibility, now, for material success. As the
laborer goes to his work, distasteful though it may be, that he may
live, that his family may be fed and clothed, so Hollister knew that
he would go to Toba Valley and wrest a compensation from that timber
with his own hands unless a sale were made.
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