t intended to
propose, but any shame she felt on this score was put to flight by a
fierce exultation over the fact that she had brought him to her feet,
that he wanted her enough to marry her. It was wonderful to be wanted
like that! But she could not achieve the mental picture of herself as
Ditmar's wife--especially when, later in the evening, she walked up
Warren Street and stood gazing at his house from the opposite pavement.
She simply could not imagine herself living in that house as its
mistress. Notwithstanding the testimony of the movies, such a
Cinderella-like transition was not within the realm of probable facts;
things just didn't happen that way.

She recalled the awed exclamation of Eda when they had walked together
along Warren Street on that evening in summer: "How would you like to
live there!"--and hot with sudden embarrassment and resentment she had
dragged her friend onward, to the corner. In spite of its size, of the
spaciousness of existence it suggested, the house had not appealed to her
then. Janet did not herself realize or estimate the innate if undeveloped
sense of form she possessed, the artist-instinct that made her breathless
on first beholding Silliston Common. And then the vision of Silliston had
still been bright; but now the light of a slender moon was as a gossamer
silver veil through which she beheld the house, as in a stage setting,
softening and obscuring its lines, lending it qualities of dignity and
glamour that made it seem remote, unreal, unattainable. And she felt a
sudden, overwhelming longing, as though her breast would burst....

Through the drawn blinds the lights in the second storey gleamed yellow.
A dim lamp burned in the deep vestibule, as in a sanctuary. And then, as
though some supernaturally penetrating ray had pierced a square hole in
the lower walls, a glimpse of the interior was revealed to her, of the
living room at the north end of the house. Two figures chased one another
around the centre table--Ditmar's children! Was Ditmar there? Impelled
irresistibly by a curiosity overcoming repugnance and fear, she went
forward slowly across the street, gained the farther pavement, stepped
over the concrete coping, and stood, shivering violently, on the lawn,
feeling like an interloper and a thief, yet held by morbid fascination.
The children continued to romp. The boy was strong and swift, the girl
stout and ungainly in her movements, not mistress of her body; he caught