y--pretty--pretty!" she said in a childishly hushed
voice, "the prettiest things in the world!"

The next instant she straightened to scan soberly the old shiny black
skirt she was wearing, and the darned stockings and cracked shoes.

"And--and you would help, I think," she went on musing. "I know you
would, but then--then it wouldn't be _me_. It would be easy for any
one to care for you--almost too easy. I--I think I'll wear them for
him--some other time, maybe--if he wants me to."

But she turned the very next moment and crossed to the mirror on the
wall--that square bit of glass before which Young Denny had stood and
stared back into his own eyes and laughed. Oblivious to everything
else she was critically scanning her own small reflection--great,
tip-tilted eyes, violet in the shadow, and then cheeks and pointed
chin--until, even in spite of her preoccupation, she became aware of
the hungry tremulousness of the mouth of that reflected image--until
the hoarse shriek of an engine's whistle leaped across the valley and
brought her up sharp, her breath going in one long, quavering gasp
between wide lips.

It was that moment toward which she had been straining every hour of
those two days; the one from which she had been shrinking every minute
of those last two hours since dark. She hesitated a second, head
thrown to one side, listening; she darted into that dark front room
and pressed her face to the cold pane, and again that warning note
came shrilling across the quiet from the far side of town.

There in the darkness, a hand on either side of the frame holding her
leaning weight, she stood and waited. Below her the house roofs lay
like patches of jet against the moon-brightness. She stood and watched
its whole length, and no darker figure crept into relief against its
lighter streak of background. Minutes after she knew that he had had
time to come, and more, she still clung there, staring wide-eyed,
villageward.

It wasn't a recollection of that half dismantled wreck of a house
under the opposite ridge that finally drew her dry-lipped gaze from
the road; she did not even think of it that moment. It was simply
because she couldn't watch any longer--not even for a minute or
two--that her eyes finally fluttered that way. But when she did turn
there was a bigger, darker blot there against the leaning picket
fence--a big-shouldered figure that had moved slowly forward until it
stood full in front of the sagging gat