er, and which awed her, likewise. She had
actually felt that bewilderment of his when, just before they had reached
the station, she had responded passionately to his last embrace. Even as
he returned her caresses, it had been conveyed to her amazingly by the
quality of his touch. Was it a lack all women felt in men? and were
these, even in supreme moments, merely the perplexed transmitters of
life?--not life itself? Her thoughts did not gain this clarity, though
she divined the secret. And yet she loved him--loved him with a
fierceness that frightened her, with a tenderness that unnerved her....

At the Hampton station she took the trolley, alighting at the Common,
following the narrow path made by pedestrians in the heavy snow to
Fillmore Street. She climbed the dark stairs, opened the dining-room
door, and paused on the threshold. Hannah and Edward sat there under the
lamp, Hannah scanning through her spectacles the pages of a Sunday
newspaper. On perceiving Janet she dropped it hastily in her lap.

"Well, I was concerned about you, in all this storm!" she exclaimed.
"Thank goodness you're home, anyway. You haven't seen Lise, have you?"

"Lise?" Janet repeated. "Hasn't she been home?"

"Your father and I have been alone all day long. Not that it is so
uncommon for Lise to be gone. I wish it wasn't! But you! When you didn't
come home for supper I was considerably worried."

Janet sat down between her mother and father and began to draw off her
gloves.

"I'm going to marry Mr. Ditmar," she announced.

For a few moments the silence was broken only by the ticking of the
old-fashioned clock.

"Mr. Ditmar!" said Hannah, at length. "You're going to marry Mr. Ditmar!"

Edward was still inarticulate. His face twitched, his eyes watered as he
stared at her.

"Not right away," said Janet.

"Well, I must say you take it rather cool," declared Hannah, almost
resentfully. "You come in and tell us you're going to marry Mr. Ditmar
just like you were talking about the weather."

Hannah's eyes filled with tears. There had been indeed an unconscious
lack of consideration in Janet's abrupt announcement, which had fallen
like a spark on the dry tinder of Hannah's hope. The result was a
suffocating flame. Janet, whom love had quickened, had a swift perception
of this. She rose quickly and took Hannah in her arms and kissed her. It
was as though the relation between them were reversed, and the daughter
had now become the moth