ted, and you look old and reasonable again--I mean as
old as you had ought to look. I never did know you to act that way
before, child. My neck ain't got the crick out of it yet."

"Poor old Clytie--but you see yesterday all day I felt queer--very
queer, and wrought up, and last night I couldn't rest, and I lay awake
and excited all night--and something seemed to give way when I saw you
in the door. Of course it was nervousness, and I shall be all right
now--"

She looked up and saw Bernal staring at her--standing in the doorway of
the big room, his face shading into the dusk back of him. She went to
him with both hands out and he kissed her.

"Is it Nance?"

"I don't know--but it's really Bernal."

"Clytie says you knew I had come."

"Clytie must have misunderstood. No one even intimated such a thing. I
came up to-day--I had to come--because--if I had known you were here,
wouldn't I have brought Allan?"

"Of course I was going to let you know, and come down in a few
days--there was some business to do here. Dear old Allan! I'm aching to
get a stranglehold on him!"

"Yes--he'll be so glad--there's so much to say!"

"I didn't know whom I should find here."

"We've had Clytie look after both houses--sometimes we've rented
mine--and almost every summer we've come here."

"You know I didn't dream I was rich until I got here. The lawyer says
they've advertised, but I've been away from everything most of the
time--not looking out for advertisements. I can't understand the old
gentleman, when I was such a reprobate and Allan was always such a
thoroughly decent chap."

"Oh, hardly a reprobate!"

"Worse, Nance--an ass--think of my talking to that dear old soul as I
did--taking twenty minutes off to win him from his lifelong faith. I
shudder when I remember it. And yet I honestly thought he might be made
to see things my way."

Their speech had been quick, and her eyes were fastened upon his with a
look from the old days striving in her to bring back that big moment of
their last parting--that singular moment when they blindly groped for
each other but had perforce to be content with one poor, trembling
handclasp! Had that trembling been a weakness or a strength? For all
time since--and increasingly during the later years--secret memories of
it had wonderfully quickened a life that would otherwise have tended to
fall dull, torpid, stubborn. It was not that their hands had met, but
that they had trembled--those