only
for a time. Outside this familiar quiet was the world, thrilled by a
terrifying life pressing upon her and calling. She longed to put her
hands before her eyes, and shut out the possibility of meeting its
garish glory; she did cover her ears, lest its cry should pierce them
and she could not resist. And so she lay there shivering, until a
strange inviting that was peace and not commotion seemed to approach her
from another side, and her inner self became conscious of unheard
voices. They were not clamorous, but sweet, and they drowned her will,
and drew her to themselves. She got softly up, and, going to the
darkened window, looked out across the orchard. There, in the greenness,
lay the old house. It called on her to come. It seemed to Dilly that she
could not make haste enough to be there. She slipped softly down the
narrow stairway, and across the kitchen, where the shadows of the
moonlit windows lay upon the floor. A great excitement thrilled her
blood; and though quite safe from discovery, she was not wholly at ease
until she had entered the orchard path, and knew her feet were wet with
dew, and heard the whippoorwill, so near now that she might have
startled him from his neighboring tree. No other bird note could have
fitted her mood so well. The wild melancholy of his tone, his home in
the night, and the omens blended with his song seemed to remove him from
the world as she herself was removed; and she hastened on with a fine
exaltation, fitted her key again in the lock, and shut the door behind
her.

As soon as Dilly had entered the sitting-room, where the old desk stood
in its place, and the clock was ticking, she felt as if all her
confusion and trouble were over. She smiled to herself in the darkness.
She had come home, and it was very good. They had begun with the attic,
in their rearranging, and this room remained unchanged. It had been her
wish to keep it, in its sweet familiarity, unaltered till the last. She
drew forward her father's chair, and sat down in it, with luxurious
abandonment, to rest. Her mother's little cricket was by her side, and
she put her feet on it and exhaled a long sigh of content. Her eyes
rested on the dark cavern which was the fireplace; and there fell upon
her a sweet sense of completed bliss, as if it were alight and she could
watch the dancing flames. And suddenly Dilly was aware that the Joyces
were all about her.

She had been sure, in her coming through the woods, tha