wild
flowers and pressing them between her palms. She seemed determined to
face another winter there alone with Melora, Miss Willis wrote. Withrow
set his jaw when that news came. It was hard on him to stay away, but
she had made it very clear that she wanted her convalescent summer to
herself. When she had to let Miss Willis go--and Miss Willis had already
taken a huge slice of Kathleen's capital--he might come and see her
through the transition. So Withrow sweltered in New York all summer,
and waited for permission.

Then Melora Meigs was gracious for once. With no preliminary illness,
with just a little gasp as the sun rose over the long range of Jeremiah,
she died. Withrow, hearing this, was off like a sprinter who hears the
signal. He found laughter and wit abiding happily in Kathleen's
recovered body. Together they watched the autumn deepen over the
prophets. Habakkuk, all insults forgiven, was their familiar.

So they brought Kathleen Somers back from the hills to live. It was
impossible for her to remain on her mountainside without a Melora Meigs;
and Melora, unlike most tortures, was unreplaceable. Kathleen's world
welcomed her as warmly as if her exile had been one long suspense: a
gentle hyprocrisy we all forgave each other. Some one went abroad and
left an apartment for her use. All sorts of delicate little events
occurred, half accidentally, in her interest. Soon some of us began to
gather, as of old. Marvel of marvels, Withrow had not spoken in that
crimson week of autumn. Without jealousy he had apparently left her to
Habakkuk. It was a brief winter--for Kathleen Somers's body, a kind of
spring. You could see her grow, from week to week: plump out and bloom
more vividly. Then, in April, without a word, she left us--disappeared
one morning, with no explicit word to servants.

Withrow once more--poor Withrow--shot forth, not like a runner, but like
a hound on a fresh scent. He needed no time-tables. He leaped from the
telephone to the train.

He found her there, he told me afterward, sitting on the step, the door
unlocked behind her but shut.

Indeed, she never entered the house again; for Withrow bore her away
from the threshold. I do not think she minded, for she had made her
point: she had seen Habakkuk once more, and Habakkuk had not gone back
on her. That was all she needed to know. They meant to go up in the
autumn after their marriage, but the cottage burned to the ground before
they got back