to remove himself when he
sank into that deep chair by her fireside, and she became silent
and turned from him her small brooding face. It was as if she
guarded obstinately her secret, as if he waited, was compelled to
wait, for the illuminating hour.

"It's finished," she said, as if continuing some conversation they
had had yesterday.

"Ah." He found himself returning reluctantly from his quest.

She rose and unlocked the cabinet where her slender sheaves were
garnered. He came and took from her a sheaf more slender than the
rest.

"Am I to read it, here and now?"

"If you will."

He sat down and read there and then. From time to time she let her
eyes light on him, shyly at first, then rest, made quiet by his
abstraction. She liked to look at him when he was not thinking of
her. He was tall and straight and fair; his massive, clean-shaven
face showed a virile ashen shade on lip and chin. He had keen, kind
eyes, and a queer mouth with sweet curves and bitter corners.

He folded the manuscript and turned it in his hands. He looked from
it to her with considering, caressing eyes. What she had written was
a love-poem in the divinest, the simplest prose. Such a poem could
only have been written by his listening virgin, his dreaming dryad.
He was afraid to speak of it, to handle its frail, half-elemental,
half-spiritual form.

"Has it justified my sending for you?"

It had. It justified her completely. It justified them both. It
justified his having come to her, his remaining with her, dining
with her, if indeed they did dine. She had always justified him,
made his coming to see her the natural, inevitable thing.

They sat late over the fire. They had locked the manuscript in its
drawer again, left it with relief.

They talked.

"How many years is it since I first saw you?"

"Three years," she said, "and two months."

"And two months. Do you remember how I found you, up there, under
the roof, in that house in Charlotte Street?"

"Yes," she said, "I remember."

"You were curled up on that funny couch in the corner, with your
back against the wall----"

"I was sitting on my feet to keep them warm."

"I know. And you wore a white shawl----"

"No," she entreated, "not a shawl."

"A white something. It doesn't matter. I don't really remember
anything but your small face, and your terrified eyes looking at me
out of the corner, and your poor little cold hands."

She wondered, did he remember her sha