Aunt Polly came into the living-room of the inn noiselessly, but
Peter, at the fireside, opened his eyes. Nothing could have driven him
to bed earlier, but he appeared to have been sleeping for hours.
Polly's glasses adorned the top of her head. This was significant.
When she had arrived at any definite conclusion she pushed her
spectacles away as though her physical vision and her spiritual were
one and the same.
"Time, Polly?" Peter yawned.
"Going on to 'leven."
"He come in?"
Full well Peter knew that he had not!
"No, Peter, and his evening meal is drying up in the oven--I had
creamed oysters, too. Creamed oysters are his specials."
"Scandalous, your goings on with this young man!" Peter sat up and
stretched. Then he smiled at his sister.
"Well, Peter, all my life I've had to take snatches and scraps out of
other folks' lives when I could get them; and I declare I've managed
to patch together a real Lady's Delight-pattern sort of quilt to
huddle under when I'm cold and tired."
"Tired now, Polly?"
"Not exactly tired, brother, but sort of rigid. Feel as if I was
braced for something. I've often had that feeling."
"Women! women!" muttered Peter, and threw on another log.
"What you suppose has happened to keep our young feller from the--the
oysters, eh?"
"I'm not accounting for folks or things these days, Peter. I'm just
keeping my eyes and ears open. Jan-an makes me uneasy!" This came like
a mild explosion.
"What's she up to?" Peter sniffed.
"Land! the poor soul is like the barometer you set such store by.
Everything looking clear and peaceful and then suddenlike up she gets,
as she did an hour ago, and grabs her truck and sets out for
Mary-Clare's like she was summoned. Just saying she had to! These are
queer times, brother. I ain't easy in my mind."
"If Jan-an doesn't calm down," Peter muttered, "she may have to be put
somewhere, as Larry Rivers once suggested. Larry hasn't many earmarks
of his pa--but he may have a sense about human ailments."
"Think shame of yourself, Peter Heathcote, to let anything Larry
Rivers says disturb your natural good feelings. Where could we send
Jan-an if we wanted to?" Peter declined to reply and Aunt Polly went
on: "Larry isn't living with Mary-Clare, Peter!" she added. This was a
more significant explosion. Peter turned and his hair seemed to spring
an inch higher around his red, puffy face.
"Where is he living?" he asked. When deeply stirred, Peter went slow
and warily.
"He's hired Peneluna's old shack."
Peter digested this; but found it chaff.
"You got this from Jan-an?"
"I got it from her and from Peneluna. Peter, Peneluna looks and acts
like one of them queer sort of ancient bodies what used to sit on
altars or something, and make remarks that no one was expected to
differ from. She just dropped in this morning and said that Larry
Rivers had taken her shack; was paying for it, too."
"Has, or is going to?" Peter was giving himself time to think.
"Has!" Aunt Polly was pulling her cushions into the cavities of her
tired little body.
"Damn funny!" muttered Peter and added another log. The heat was
growing ferocious. Then, as he eyed his sister: "Better turn in,
Polly. You look scrunched." To look "scrunched" was to look
desperately exhausted. "No use wearing yourself out for--for folks,"
he added with a tenderness in his voice that always brought a peculiar
smile to Polly's eyes.
"I don't see as there is anything else much, brother, to wear one's
self out for."
"Why frazzle yourself for anything?"
"Why shouldn't I? What should I be keeping myself for, Peter? Surely
not for my own satisfaction. No. I always hold if folks want me, then
I'm particularly pleased to be had. As to frazzling, seems like we
only frazzle just _so_ far, then a stitch holds and we get our
breath."
In this mood Polly worried Peter deeply. He could not keep from
looking ahead--he avoided that usually--to a time when the little nest
at the far end of the sofa would be empty; when the click of knitting
needles would sound no more in the beautiful old room.
"There's me!" he whispered at length like a half-ashamed but
frightened boy.
Polly drew her glasses down and gave him a long, straight look full of
a deep and abiding love.
"You're the stitch, Peter my man," she whispered back as if fearing
someone might hear, "always the saving stitch. And take this to bed
with you, brother: the frazzling isn't half so dangerous as dry rot,
or moth eating holes in you. Queer, but I was getting to think of
myself as laid on the shelf before Brace drifted in, and when I do
that I get old-acting and stiff-jointed. But I've noticed that it's
the same with folks as it is with the world, when they begin to
flatten down, then the good Lord drops something into them to make 'em
sorter rise. No need to flatten down until you're dead. Feeling tired
is healthy and proper--not feeling at all is being finished. So now,
Peter, you just go along to bed. I always have felt that a man hates
to be set up for, but he can overlook a woman doing it; he sets it
down to her general foolishness, but Brace would just naturally get
edgy if he found us both up."
Peter came clumsily across the room and stood over the small creature
on the sofa. He wanted to kiss her. Instead, he said gruffly:
"See that the fire's banked, Polly. Looks as if I'd laid on a powerful
lot of wood without thinking." Then he laughed and went on: "You're
durned comical, Polly. What you said about the Lord putting yeast into
folks and the world _is_ comical."
"I didn't say yeast, Peter Heathcote."
"Well, yer meant yeast."
"No, I didn't mean yeast. I just meant something like Brace was
talking about to-day."
"What was it?" Peter stood round and solid with the firelight ruddily
upon him.
"He said that the fighting overseas ain't properly a war, but a
general upheaval of things that have got to come to the top and be
skimmed off. We ain't ever looked at it that way." Polly resorted to
familiar similes when deeply affected.
"I guess all wars is that." Peter looked serious. He rarely spoke of
the trouble that seemed far, far from his quiet, detached life, but
lately he had shaken his head over it in a new way. "But God ain't
meaning for us to take sides, Polly. It's like family troubles. You
don't understand them, and you better keep out. Just think of our good
German friends and neighbours. We can't go back on them just 'cause
their kin across the seas have taken to fighting. Our Germans have, so
to speak, married in our family, and we must stand by 'em." Peter was
voicing his unrest. Polly saw the trouble in his face.
"Of course, brother, and I only meant that lately so many things are
stirring in the Forest that it seems more like the Forest wasn't a
scrap set off by itself. I seem to have lots of scraps floating in my
mind lately--things I've heard, and all are taking on meaning now. I
remember someone saying, I guess it was the Bishop, that in a drop of
ocean water, there was all that went into the ocean's making, except
size. That didn't mean anything until Brace set me to--to turning over
in my mind, and, Peter, it seems terrible sensible now. All the big,
big world is just little scraps of King's Forests welded all together
and every King's Forest is a drop of the world."
Peter looked gravely troubled as men often do when their women take to
thinking on their own lines. Usually the heedless man dismisses the
matter with but small respect, but Peter was not that kind. All his
life he had depended upon his sister's "vision" as he called it. He
might laugh and tease her, but he never took a definite step without
reaching out to her.
"A man must plant his foot solid on the path he knows," he often said,
"but that don't hinder him from lifting his eyes to the sky." And it
was through Aunt Polly's eyes that Peter caught his view of skies.
"I don't exactly like Brace digging down into things so much." Peter
gave a troubled sigh. "Some things ain't any use when they are dug
up."
"But some things _are_, brother. We must know."
"Well, by gosh!" Peter began to sway toward the door like a heavily
freighted side-wheeler. "I get to feeling sometimes as if I'd kicked
over a hornet's nest and wasn't certain whether it was a last year's
one or this year's. In one case you can hold your ground, in the other
you best take to your heels. Well, I'm going to leave you, Polly, for
your date with your young man. Don't forget the fire and don't set up
too long."
Left to herself, Polly neatly folded her knitting and stuck the
glistening needles through it. She folded her small, shrivelled hands
and a radiant smile touched her old face.
Oh! the luxury of _daring_ to sit up for a man. The excitement of the
adventure! And while she waited and brooded, Polly was thinking as she
had never done until recently. All her life she believed that she had
thought, and to suddenly find, as she had lately, that her conclusions
were either wrong or confused made her humble.
Now there was Mary-Clare! Why, from her birth, Mary-Clare had been an
open book! Poor Polly shook her head. An open book? Well, if so she
did not know the language in which that book was written, for
Mary-Clare was troubling her now deeply.
And Larry? Larry had suddenly come into focus, and Maclin, and
Northrup. They all seemed reeling around her; all united, but in
deadly peril of being flung apart.
It was all too much for Aunt Polly and she unrolled her knitting and
set the needles to their accustomed task. Eventually Mary-Clare would
come to the inn and simply tell her story--full well Polly knew that.
It was Mary-Clare's way to keep silent until necessity for silence was
past and then calmly take those she loved into her confidence. But
there were disturbing things going on. Aunt Polly could not blind
herself to them.
At this moment Northrup's step sounded outside. He came hastily, but
making little noise.
"What's up?" he asked, starting back at the sight of Aunt Polly.
"Just me, son. Your dinner is scorched to nothing, but I wanted to
tell you where the cookie jar is."
Northrup came over to the sofa and sat down.
"You deep and opaque female," he said, throwing his arm over the
little bent shoulders. "Own up. It isn't cookies, it's a switch. What
have I done? Out with it."
Aunt Polly laughed softly.
"It's neither cookies nor switches when you come down to it," she
chuckled. "It's just waiting and not knowing why."
Northrup leaned back against the sofa and said quietly:
"Guessing about me, Aunt Polly?"
"Guessing about everything, son. Just when I thought I was nearing
port, where I ought to be at my age, I find myself all at sea."
"Same with me, Aunt Polly. We're part of the whole upheaval, and take
it from me, some of us are going to find ourselves high and dry by and
by and some of us will go under. We don't understand it; we can't; but
we've got to try to--and that's the very devil. Aunt Polly, I've been
on the Point, talking to some of the folks down there--there is a
fellow called Twombley, odd cuss. He told me he's tried to earn his
living, but found people too particular."
"Earn his living, huh!" Polly tried to look indignant. "He's a scamp,
and old Doctor Rivers was the ruination of him. The old doctor used to
quote Scripture in a scandalous way. He said since we have the poor
always with us, it is up to us to have a place for them where they can
be comfortable. Terrible doctrine, I say, but that was what the old
doctor kept the Point for and it was after Twombley tried to earn his
living--the scamp!" Northrup saw that he had diverted Aunt Polly and
gladly let her talk on.
"Doctor had an old horse as was just pleading to be put an end to, but
the doctor couldn't make his mind up to it and Twombley finally
undertook to settle the matter with a shot-gun, up back in the hills.
Twombley never missed the bull's-eye--a terrible hand with a gun he
was. The doctor gave him two dollars for the job and looked real sick
the day he heard that shot. Well, less than a week after Twombley came
to the doctor and says as how he heard that a horse has to be buried
and that if it isn't the owner gets fined twenty-five dollars, and he
says he'll bury the carcass for five dollars. He explained how the
horse, lying flat, was powerful sizable, and it would be a stern job
to get it under ground. Well, old doctor gave the five dollars and
Twombley took to the woods.
"It was a matter of a month, maybe, when Twombley came back, and soon
after old Philander Sniff appeared with a horse and cart, and Doctor
Rivers, as soon as he set his eyes on the horse, sent for Twombley. Do
you know, son, that scamp actually figured it out with the doctor as
to the cost of food and care he'd been put to in order to get that
shot-and-buried-horse into shape for selling! He'd sold him for ten
dollars and expenses were twelve."
Northrup leaned back and laughed until the quiet house reëchoed with
his mirth.
"Son, son!" cautioned Polly, shaking and dim-eyed, "it's going on to
midnight. We can't carouse like this. But land! it is uplifting to
have a talk when you ought to be sleeping. Well, the old doctor
bought the Point just then and bought Twombley a new gun. Folks as
couldn't earn their keep proper naturally drifted to the Point--God's
living acre, as the doctor called it."
Northrup rose and stretched his arms and then bent, as Peter had done,
to Aunt Polly. But unlike Peter he kissed the small yearning face
upraised to his.
"It must be pleasant--being your mother," Polly whispered.
"It's pleasant having you acting as substitute," Northrup replied.
"Shall I bank the fire, Aunt Polly?"
"No, son, there's something else I must see to before I turn in.
Aren't you going for the cookies?"
"Yes'm. Going to munch them in bed." And tiptoeing away in the most
orthodox manner Northrup left Aunt Polly alone.
Why was she staying up? She had no clear idea but she was restless,
sleepless, and bed, to her, was no comfort under such conditions.
However, since she had stated that she had something to do, she must
find it. She went to a desk in the farther end of the room, and took
from it her house-keeping book. She would balance that and surprise
Peter! Peter always _was_ so surprised when she did. She bought the
book to her nest on the sofa and set to work.
Debit and credit. Figures, figures, figures. And then, mistily, words
took their places. Names.
Mary-Clare: Larry.
Larry: Northrup.
Mary-Clare! It was funny. The columns danced and giddily wobbled--and
at the foot there was only--Mary-Clare! Mary-Clare was troubling the
dear old soul.
Then, startled by the falling of the book to the floor, Aunt Polly
opened her eyes and gazed into the face of Mary-Clare standing before
her!
The girl had a wind-swept look, physically and spiritually. Her hair
was loose about her face, her eyes like stars, and she was smiling.
"Oh! you dear thing," she whispered, bending to recover the book,
"adding and subtracting when the whole world sleeps. Isn't it a
wonderful feeling to have the night to yourself?"
Mary-Clare crouched down before the red blazing logs; her coat and hat
fell from her and she stretched her hands out to the heat with a
little shiver of luxurious content.
Aunt Polly knew the girl's mood and left her to herself. She had come
to tell something but must tell it in her own way. To question, to
intrude a thought, would only tend to confuse and distract her, so
Polly took up her knitting and nodded cheerfully. She had a feeling
that all along she had been waiting for Mary-Clare.
"I suppose big things like being born and dying are very simple when
they come. It is the mistaking the big and little things that makes us
all so uncertain. Aunt Polly, Larry has left me." The start had been
made!
"Yes; Peneluna told us. He hasn't gone far." Aunt Polly knitted on
while Mary-Clare gave a little laugh.
"Oh! dearie, he was far, far away before he started for the Point.
Land doesn't count--it's more than that, only I did not know. Isn't it
queer, Aunt Polly, now that I understand things, I find that marrying
Larry and having the babies haven't touched me at all--I never
belonged to them or they to me--except Noreen. And it's queer about
Noreen, too, she will never seem part of all that."
Mary-Clare, her eyes fixed on the fire, was thinking aloud; her breath
came short and quick as if she had been running.
"My dear child!" Aunt Polly was shocked in spite of herself. "No woman
can shake off her responsibilities in that way. Larry is your husband
and you have been a mother."
"You are talking _words_, Aunt Polly, not things." Aunt Polly knew
that she _was_ and it made her wince.
"That's the trouble with us all, Aunt Polly. Saying words over and
over and calling them things--as if you could take God in!"
There was no bitterness in the tones, but there was the weary
impatience of a child that had been too often denied the truth.
"No matter what people say and say, underneath there is _truth_, Aunt
Polly, and it's up to us to find it."
"And you think you are competent"--Aunt Polly, reflecting that she was
using _words_, used them doubtfully--"you think you are competent to
know what _is_ truth and to act upon it--to the extent of sending your
husband out of his home?"
If a small love-bird could look and sound fierce it would resemble
Aunt Polly at that moment. Mary-Clare turned from the contemplation of
the fire and fixed her deep eyes upon the troubled old face.
"You dear!" she whispered and then laughed.
Presently, the fire again holding her, Mary-Clare went on:
"I think I must try to find truth with my woman-brain, Aunt Polly.
That was what my doctor-daddy always insisted upon. He wouldn't even
let me take _his_ word when it came to anything that meant a lot to
me."
"He wanted you to marry Larry!"
This was a telling stroke and a long silence followed. Then:
"I wonder, Aunt Polly, I wonder."
"Do you doubt, child?"
"I don't know, but even if he did he was sick and so--so tired, and
Larry always worried him. I know very surely that if my doctor were
here, and knew everything, he'd say harder than ever: 'Use your
woman-mind.' And I'm going to! Why, Aunt Polly, I haven't driven Larry
away from his home. I meant to make it a better place, once I set the
wrong aside. But you see, he wanted it just _his_ way and nothing else
would do."
The dear old face that had confronted life vicariously flushed gently;
but the young face that had set itself to the stern facts of life
showed neither weakness nor doubt.
"It has come to me, dear"--Mary-Clare now turned and came close to
Aunt Polly, resting her folded arms on the thin little knees--"It has
come to me, dear, that things are not fixed right and when they are
not, it won't do any good to keep on acting as if they were. Being
married to Larry could never make it right for me to do what seems to
me wrong. And oh! Aunt Polly, I wish that I could make you understand.
Do try to understand, dear, there is a sacred place in my soul, and I
just do believe it is in all women's souls if they dared to say
so--that no one, not even a husband, has a right to claim. It is hers
and--God's. But men don't know, and some don't care--and they just
rush along and take and take, never counting what it may cost--and
they make laws to help them when they might fail without, and--well,
Aunt Polly, it is hard to stand all alone in the world. I think the
really happy women are those who don't know what I mean, or those that
have loved enough, loved a man true enough--to share that sacred place
with him--the place he ought not ask for or have a law for. I know you
do not understand, Aunt Polly. I did not myself until Peneluna told
me."
At this Aunt Polly braced against the pillows as if they were rocks.
"Peneluna!" she gasped.
"Let me tell you, Aunt Polly. It is such a wonderful thing."
As she might have spoken to Noreen, so Mary-Clare spoke now to the
woman who had only viewed life as Moses had the Promised Land, from
her high mount.
"And so, can you not see, dear Aunt Polly, it isn't a thing that laws
can touch; it isn't being good or bad--it is too big a Thing to call
by name. Peneluna could starve and still keep it. She could be lonely
and serve, but she _knew_. I don't love Larry, I cannot help it. All
my life I am going to keep all of the promise I can, Aunt Polly, but
I'm going to--to keep myself, too! A woman can give a man a good
deal--but she can't give him some things if she tries to! Look at the
women; some of them in the Forest. Aunt Polly, if marriage means what
they look like----" Mary-Clare shuddered.
Aunt Polly had suddenly grown tender and far-seeing. She let go the
sounding words that Church and State had taught her.
"Little girl," she said, and all her motherhood rushed forward to
seize, as it had ever done, those "scraps" of others' lives, "suppose
the time should come when there would be in your life another--someone
besides Larry? Why has all this come so sudden to you?"
Northrup seemed to loom in the room, just beyond the fire's glow. Her
fear was taking shape.
"Oh! dearie, I might then ask Larry to release me from my promise. My
doctor used to say one could do that, but if he would not, why,
then--I'd keep my bargain as far as I could. But----" and here
Mary-Clare rose and flung her arms above her head. The action was
jubilant, majestic. "Oh! the wonder of it all; to be free to be myself
and prove what I _think_ is right without having to take another's
idea of it. I'll listen; I'll try to understand and be patient--but it
cannot be wrong, Aunt Polly, the thing I've done--since this great
feeling of wings has come to me instead of heavy feet! Why, dear, I
want something more than--than the things women _think_ are theirs. We
don't know what is ours until we try."
"And fail, my child?" Aunt Polly was crying.
"Yes; and fail sometimes and be hurt--but paying and going on."
"And leaving your man behind you?"
"Aunt Polly"--Mary-Clare looked down upon the kind, quivering face--"a
woman's man cannot be left behind. He'll be beside her somehow. If she
stays back, as I've tried to do, she wouldn't be his woman! That's the
dreadful trouble with Larry and me. But, dearie, it isn't always a man
in a woman's life."
"But the long, lonely way, child!" Polly was retracing her own denied
womanhood.
"It need not be lonely, dear, when we women find--other things. They
will count. They must."
"What other things, Mary-Clare?"
"That's what we must be finding out, dear. Love; the man: some day
they will be the glory, making everything more splendid, but not--the
all. I think I should have died, Aunt Polly, had I kept on."
Like an inspired young oracle, Mary-Clare spoke and then dropped again
by the fire.
"I've somehow learned all this," she whispered, "in my Place up on the
hill. It just came to me, little by little, until it convinced me. I
had to tell Larry the truth."
"Mary-Clare, I do not know; I don't feel able to put it into words,
but I do believe you're going to make sad trouble for yourself, child.
Such a thing as this you have done has never been done before in the
Forest."
"Maybe."
A door upstairs slammed loudly and both women started nervously.
"I must tell Peter to fix the latch of the attic door to-morrow," Aunt
Polly said, relieved to be back on good, plain, solid ground. "The
attic winders are raised and the wind's rising. It will be slam, slam
all night, unless----" she rose quickly.
"Just a minute, Aunt Polly, I'm so tired. Please let me lie here on
the couch and rest for an hour and then I'll slip home."
"Let me put you to bed properly, child. You look suddenly beat flat.
That's the way with women. They get to thinking they've got wings when
they ain't, child, they ain't. You're making a terrible break in your
life, child. Terrible."
Mary-Clare was arranging the couch.
"Come, dear," she wheedled, "you tuck me up--so! I'll bank the fire
when I go and leave everything safe. A little rest and then
to-morrow!--well, you'll see that I have wings, Aunt Polly; they are
only tired now--for they are new wings! I know that it must seem all
madness, but it had to come."
Aunt Polly pulled the soft covering over the huddled form--only the
pale, wistful face was presently to be seen; the great, haunting eyes
made Aunt Polly catch her breath. She bent and kissed the forehead.
"Poor, reaching-out child!" she whispered.
"For something that is _there_, Aunt Polly."
"God knows!"
"Of course He does. That's why He gave us the--reach. Good-night. Oh!
how I love you, Aunt Polly. Good-night!"
It was Northrup's door that had slammed shut. Aunt Polly went above,
secured the innocent attic door, and then pattered down to her bedroom
near Peter's, feeling that her house, at least, was safe.
It was silent at last. Northrup, in his dark chamber, lay awake
and--ashamed, though heaven was his witness that his sin was not one
he had planned. Aunt Polly had been on his mind. He hated to have her
down there alone. Her sitting up for him had touched and--disturbed
him; he had left his door ajar.
"I'll listen for a few minutes and if she doesn't go to bed, I'll go
down and shake her," he concluded, and then promptly went to sleep and
was awakened by voices. Low, earnest voices, but he heard no words and
was sleepily confused. If he thought anything, he thought Peter had
been doing what was needed to be done--driving Polly to bed!
And then Northrup _did_ hear words. A word here; a word there. He
_knew_ things he had no right to know--he was awake at last,
conscientiously, as well as physically. He got up and slammed the
door!
But he could not go to sleep. He felt hot and cold; mean and
indignant--but above all else, tremendously excited. He lay still a
little longer and then opened his door in time to hear that
"good-night, good-night"; and presently Aunt Polly's raid on the
unoffending attic door at the other end of the corridor and her
pattering feet on their way, at last, to her bedchamber.
"She's forgot to bank the fire." Northrup could see the glow from his
post and remembered Uncle Peter's carefulness. "I'll run down and make
things safe and lock the door." Northrup still held his respect for
doors.
In heavy gown and soft slippers he noiselessly descended. The
living-room at the far end was dark; the fire glowed at the other,
dangerously, and one threatening log had rolled menacingly to the
fore.
Bent upon quick action Northrup silently crossed the floor, grasped
the long poker and pushed the blazing wood back past the safety line
and held it there.
His face burned, but there was a hypnotic lure in that bed of red
coals. All that he had just heard--a disjointed and rather dramatic
revealment--was having a peculiar effect upon him. He had become aware
of some important facts that accounted for things, such as Rivers's
appearance on the Point. He had attributed that advent to Maclin's
secret business; but it was, evidently, quite different.
What had occurred in the yellow house before the final break?
Northrup's imagination came to the fore fully equipped. Northrup was a
man of the herd--at least he had been, until lately. He knew the
tracks of the herd and its laws and codes.
"The brute!" he muttered under his breath; "and that kind of a girl,
too. Nothing is too fine for some devils to appropriate and--smirch.
Poor little girl!"
And then Northrup recalled Mary-Clare as he had seen her that day as
she emerged from the woods to meet him and her child. The glory of
Peneluna's story was in her soul, the autumn sunlight on her face.
That lovely, smiling, untouched face of hers! Again and again that
memory of her held his fancy.
"The cursed brute--hasn't _got_ her, thank God. She's out of the
trap."
And, all unconsciously, while this moral indignation had its way,
Northrup was drawing nearer to Mary-Clare; understanding her,
appropriating her! God knew he meant no wrong. After all she had
suffered he wasn't going to mess her life more--but he'd somehow make
up to her what she'd a perfect right to. All men were not low and
bestial. He had a duty--he would be above the touch of idle chatter;
he would take a hand in the game!
And just then Northrup, controlled by the force of attraction, turned
his head and looked at the face of Mary-Clare upon the couch near
him!
In all his life Northrup had never looked upon the face of a sleeping
woman, and it stirred him deeply. He became as rigid as marble; the
heat beat upon him as it might have upon stone. And then--as such wild
things do occur, his old, familiar dream came to him; he seemed _in_
the dream. He had at last opened one of those closed doors and was
seeing what the secret room held! He was part of the dream as he was
of his book in the making.
He breathed lightly; he did not move--but he was overcome by waves of
emotion that had never before even lapped his feet.
At that instant Mary-Clare's eyes opened. For a moment they held his;
then she turned, sighed, and he believed that she had not really
awakened.
Northrup rose stiffly and made his way to his room.
"She was asleep!" he fiercely thought until he was safe behind his
locked door!
"Was she?" He had to face that in the silence of the hours after.
"I'll know when I next meet her." This was almost a groan.