he went into the big kitchen and prepared food. It
was a place of much noise. The great copper kettles chimed and murmured
whenever he touched them, and they spoke to him of the servants who were
gone. Half of his bitterness had already left him and he could remember
those days in his childhood when Abraham had told him tales, and
Zacharias had taught him how to ride at the price of many a tumble from
the lofty back of the gentle old mare. Yet he set the food on the table
in the patio and ate it with steady resolution. Then he returned to the
big kitchen and cleansed the dishes.

It was the late afternoon, now, the time when the sunlight becomes
yellow and loses its heat, and the heavy blue shadow sloped across the
patio. A quiet time. Now and again he found that he was tense with
waiting for sounds in the wind of the servants returning for the night
from the fields, and the shrill whinny of the colts coming back from the
pastures to the paddocks. But he remembered what had happened and made
himself relax.

There was a great dread before him. Finally he realized that it was the
coming of the night, and he went into the Room of Silence for the last
time to find consolation. The book of Matthew had always been a means of
bringing the consolation and counsel of the Voice, but when he opened
the book he could only think of the girl, as she must have leaned above
it. How had she read? With a smile of mockery or with tears? He closed
the book; but still she was with him. It seemed that when he turned in
the chair he must find her waiting behind him and he found himself
growing tense with expectation, his heart beating rapidly.

Out of the Room of Silence he fled as if a curse lived in it, and
without following any conscious direction, he went to the room of Ruth.

The fragrance had left the wild flowers, and the great golden blossoms
at the window hung thin and limp, the bell lips hanging close together,
the color faded to a dim yellow. The green things must be taken away
before they molded. He raised his hand to tear down the transplanted
vine, but his fingers fell away from it. To remove it was to destroy the
last trace of her. She had seen these flowers; on account of them she
had smiled at him with tears of happiness in her eyes. The skin of the
mountain lion on the floor was still rumpled where her foot had fallen,
and he could see the indistinct outline where the heel of her shoe had
pressed.

He avoided that plac