out great
shadows in the room, she took a little cricket and sat down by the fire.
There she had mused many an evening which seemed to her less dull than
the general course of her former life, while her husband occupied the
hearthside chair and told her stories of the war. He had a childlike
clearness and simplicity of speech, and a self-forgetful habit of
reminiscence. The war was the war to him, not a theatre for boastful
individual action; but Amelia remembered now that he had seemed to hold
heroic proportions in relation to that immortal past. One could hardly
bring heroism into the potato-field and the cow-house; but after this
lapse of time, it began to dawn upon her that the man who had fought at
Gettysburg and the man who marked out for her the narrow rut of an
unchanging existence were one and the same. And as if the moment had
come for an expected event, she heard again the jangling of bells
without, and the old vivid color rushed into her cheeks, reddened before
by the fire-shine. It was as though the other night had been a
rehearsal, and as if now she knew what was coming. Yet she only clasped
her hands more tightly about her knees and waited, the while her heart
hurried its time. The knocker fell twice, with a resonant clang. She did
not move. It beat again, the more insistently. Then the heavy outer door
was pushed open, and Laurie Morse came in, looking exactly as she knew
he would look--half angry, wholly excited, and dowered with the beauty
of youth recalled. He took off his cap and stood before her.

"Why didn't you come?" he asked imperatively. "Why didn't you let me
in?"

The old wave of irresponsible joy rose in her at his presence; yet it
was now not so much a part of her real self as a delight in some
influence which might prove foreign to her. She answered him, as she was
always impelled to do, dramatically, as if he gave her the cue, calling
for words which might be her sincere expression, and might not.

"If you wanted it enough, you could get in," she said perversely, with
an alluring coquetry in her mien. "The door was unfastened."

"I did want to enough," he responded. A new light came into his eyes. He
held out his hands toward her. "Get up off that cricket!" he commanded.
"Come here!"

Amelia rose with a swift, feminine motion, but she stepped backward, one
hand upon her heart. She thought its beating could be heard.

"It ain't Saturday," she whispered.

"No, it ain't. But I could