Martie could find no answer. She was excited, bewildered, thrilled, all at once. She felt that another word would be too much. Silently she picked up her bowl and her flowers, and crossed the porch to the house.

Lydia, coming in late from a meeting of the Fair Committee, was speechless. In a pregnant silence she lent cold aid to her audacious sister. The big bed in Len's room was made, the bureau spread with a clean, limp towel. Pauline was interviewed; she brightened. Dean Silver was from Prince Edward's Island, too, it seemed. Pauline could make onion soup, and rolls were set, thanks be! She could open preserves; she didn't suppose that sliced figs were good enough for a company dessert.

They had the preserves, and the white figs, too; figs that Teddy and Martie had knocked that morning from the big tree in the yard. Lydia noticed with resentment that Pa had really brightened perceptibly under the unexpected stimulus. It was Lydia who said mildly, almost reproachfully, "I'm sorry that I have to give you a rather small napkin, Mr. Dryden; we had company to dinner last night, and I find we're a little short--"

John hardly heard her; he saw nothing but Martie, and only rarely moved his eyes from her, or spoke to any one else. He glowed at her lightest word, laughed at her mildest pleasantry; he frequently asked her family if she was not "wonderful."

This was the att.i.tude of that old lover of her dreams, and in spite of amus.e.m.e.nt and trepidation and nervous consciousness that she was hopelessly entangling her affairs, Martie's heart began to swell, and her senses to feel creeping over their alertness a deadly and delicious languor. She had been powerless all her life: she thrilled to the knowledge of her power now.

Dean Silver easily kept the conversation moving. They learned that he had been overworking, had been warned by his physician that he must take a rest. So he and John were off for the Orient: he himself had always wanted to sail up the Nile, and to see Benares.

"John, what a year in fairyland!" Martie exclaimed.

"Well, that's what I tell him," said the novelist. "But he isn't at all sure he wants to go!"

As John merely gave Martie an unmistakable look at this, she tried hurriedly for a careless answer.

"John, you would be mad not to go!"

"You and I will talk it over after awhile," he suggested, with an enigmatic smile.

This was terrible. Martie gave one startled look at Lydia, who had compressed her mouth into a thin line of disapproval. Lydia was obviously thinking of Cliff, who might come in later. Martie found herself unable to think of Cliff.

They had coffee in the garden, in the still summer dusk. Teddy rioted among the bushes, as alert and strategic as was his gray kitten. John sat silent beside Martie, and whenever she glanced at him she met his deep smile. Lydia preserved a forbidding silence, but Malcolm's suspicions of his younger daughter were pleasantly diverted by the novelist. Dean Silver was probing into the early history of the State.

"But there must have been silver and gold mines up as far as this, then; aren't you in the gold belt?"

"In the year 1858," Malcolm began carefully, "a company was formed here for the purpose of investigating the claims made by--"

John finished his coffee with a gulp, and walked across the dim gra.s.s to Martie, and she rose without a word.

"Martie, isn't it Teddy's bedtime?" asked Lydia. John frowned faintly at her.

"Can't you put him to bed?" he asked directly. Lydia's cool cheek flushed.

"Why, yes--I will--" she answered confusedly. Martie called her thanks over her shoulder as they walked away. She was reminded of the day she had called on John at his office.

Quick and shaken, the beating of her heart bewildered her; she hardly knew where they walked, or how they began to talk. The velvety summer night was sweet with flowers; the moon would be late, but the sky was high and dark, and thick with stars. In the silver glimmer the town lights, and the dim eye of the dairy, far up on the range, burned red.

Children were shouting somewhere, and dogs barking; now and then the other mingled noises were cut across by the clear, mellow note of a motor car's horn.

They came to the lumber-yard by the river, and went in among the shadowy piles of planks. The starry dome was arched, infinitely far and yet friendly, above them; the air here was redolent of the clean wood.

From houses near by, but out of sight beyond the high wall, they heard occasional voices: a child was called, a wire-door slammed. But they were alone.

John was instantly all the acknowledged if not the accepted lover. Once fairly inside the fence, she found her heart beating madly against his own; as tall as he, she tried to deny him her lips. Her arms were pinioned. Man and woman breathed fast.

"Martie--my wonderful--my beautiful--girl! I never lived until now!" he said after a silence.

"But, John--John--" He had taken her off her guard; she was stammering like a school-girl. "Please, dear, you mustn't--not now. I want to talk to you--I must. Won't you wait until we have had a talk--please--you're frightening me!"

His hold was instantly loosed.

"My dearest child, I wouldn't frighten you for anything in the world.

Let us have the talk--here, climb up here! It was only--realizing--what I've been dreaming about all these months! I'm flesh and blood, you know, dear. I shall not feel myself alive--you know that!--until you are in my arms, my own--my wife."

She had seated herself on the top of the pile; now he sat on the ledge that was a few inches lower, and laid his arms across her knees, so that his hands were clasped in both her own. Her senses were swimming, her heart itself seemed turned to liquid fire, and ran trembling through her body.

"My wife!" John said, eager eyes fairly devouring her. "My glorious wife, the loveliest woman in the world! Do you know what it means, Martie? Do you know what it means, after what we both have known?"

The sight of his wistful, daring smile in the starlight, the touch of his big, eager hands, and the sound of the odd, haunting voice turned the words to magic. She tightened her fingers on his.

"I bought the Connecticut house on the river," he said presently. "It belonged to a carpenter, a fine fellow; but the railroad doesn't go there, and he and his wife wanted to go to a bigger place. Silver and I went up and saw it, but I didn't want to do anything until you came.

But there are rocks, you know--" Hearing something between a laugh and a sigh, he stopped short. "Rocks," he repeated, "you know all those places are rocky!"

"I know, dearest boy!"

The term overwhelmed him. She heard him try to go on; he choked, glanced at her smilingly, and shook his head. A second later he laid his face against her hands, and she felt that it was wet.

The clock in the Town Hall struck nine--struck ten, and still they sat on, sometimes talking, sometimes staring up at the steadily beating stars. Quiet fell upon Monroe, lights moved in the little houses and went out. There was a little stir when the crowd poured out from the moving pictures: voices, shouts, laughter, then silence again.

Suddenly Martie decreed their return to the house. But the ecstasy of finding each other, again was too new. They pa.s.sed the dark old gateway to the sunken garden, and walked on, talking thirstily, drinking deep of the joy of words.

Hand in hand they went up the hill, and time and s.p.a.ce might have equally been demolished. That hill had seemed a long climb to Martie years ago: to-night it seemed a dream hill, she and John were so soon at its little summit.

Below them lay the dark village and the furry tops of trees flooded with gray moonlight. The odours of a summer night crept out to meet them, odours of flowers and dew-wet, sunburned gra.s.s. The roadside fences were wreathed with wild blackberry vines that took weird shapes in the dark. In the idle fields spreading oaks threw shadows of inky blackness.

Martie hardly thought of Clifford. Across her spinning senses an occasional thought of him crept, but he had no part in to-night.

To-morrow she must end this dream of exquisite fulfillment, to-morrow, somehow, she must send John away. But to-night was theirs.

Their talk was that of lovers, whose only life is in each other's presence. They leaned on an old fence, above the town, and whether they were grave, or whether Martie's gay laugh and his eager echoing laugh rang out, the enchantment held them alike.

It was after one o'clock when they came slowly down the hill, and let themselves silently into the shadowy garden. Martie fled noiselessly past the streak of light under Lydia's door, gained her own room, and blinked at her lighted gas.

The mirror showed her a pale, exalted face, with glittering blue eyes under loosened bronze hair. She was cold, excited, tired, and ecstatic.

She moved the sprawling Teddy to the inside of the bed, stooping to lay her cold cheek and half-opened lips to his flushed little face. She got into a wrapper, her hair falling free on her shoulders, and sat dreaming and remembering.

Lydia, in her gray wrapper, came in, with haggard, reproachful eyes.

Lydia was pale, too, but it was the paleness of fatigue, and had nothing in common with Martie's starry pallor.

"Martie, do you know what time it is?"

"Lyd--I know it's late!"

"Late? It's two o'clock."

"Not really?" Martie bunched her splendid hair with a white hand under each ear, and faced her affronted sister innocently.

"Don't say 'not really!'" Lydia, who happened to hate this expression, which as a matter of fact Martie only used in moments of airy rebellion, said sharply: "If that man hasn't any sense, you ought to have!"