sent: the night before, and that evening,
when he was coming to see her again and would have things to tell her.

He had wanted to tell them then--some of the things about himself which
he said she must know and which he gave fair warning would hurt her,
"Then not to-night," she had said.

And now the happiness was too great, filled her too completely and
radiantly for her to fear the pain of which she had been warned. She was
fortified against all pain.

Wayne's finding Ann seemed to throw the gate to happiness wide open to
her, giving her, not only happiness, but the right to it. She smiled in
thinking how, again, it was Ann who opened a door.

If Ann had never come she would not--in this way which had made it all
possible--have known her man who mended the boats. The experience with
Ann was as a bridge upon which they met. It was because of Ann they could
walk so far along that bridge.

The adventure, and what had come to seem the tragedy of the adventure,
was over. It turned her back to those first days of play--the pretending
which had led to realizing, the fancies which had been paths to
realities.

They would not go on in just that way; some other way would shape itself;
she and Wayne would talk of it, make some plan for Ann. She could plan it
better after the letter she would have from Wayne the next day telling of
finding Ann.

It was a new adventure now. The great adventure. But it was because she
had ventured at all that the great adventure was offered her.

Her venturing had led her to the crowds. She was not forgetting the
crowds. She would go back to them. It could not be otherwise. There was
much she wanted to do, and so much she wanted to know. But she would go
back to them happy, and because happy, wiser and stronger.

In myriad ways life had beckoned to her, promised her, as with buoyant
step and singing heart she walked sunny paths that golden October
afternoon.

Later she had stopped to see Mrs. Prescott, and she, as she so often did,
talked of Katie's mother. Katie was glad to be talking of her mother,
and, as they also did, of her father. It brought them very near, so close
it was as if they could know of the beautiful happiness in their child's
heart. They talked of things which had happened when Katie was a little
girl, making herself as the little girl so real, visualizing her whole
life, making real and dear those things in which her life had been lived.

As she thought of it again