, and nobody else," she whispered.

"What do you think, Helen?" he asked. "Don't you think that love is the
greatest thing in life?"

"Why, of course it is," she whispered, and patted his arm again.

CHAPTER XXIII

In spite of her brave words the day before, when Mary left the house for
the office in the morning, a feeling of uncertainty and regret weighed
upon her, and made her pensive. More than once she cast a backward look
at the things she was leaving behind--love, the joys of youth, the
pleasure places of the world to see, romance, heart's ease, and "skies
for ever blue."

At the memory of Wally's phrase she grew more thoughtful than before.

"But would they be for ever blue?" she asked herself. "I guess every
woman in the world expects them to be, when she marries. Yes, and they
ought to be, too, an awful lot more than they are. Oh, I'm sure there's
something wrong somewhere.... I'm, sure here's something wrong...."

She thought of the four women standing in the driveway by the side of the
house, looking lost and bewildered, and the old sigh of pity arose in her
heart.

"The poor women," she thought. "They didn't look as though the sweetest
story ever told had lasted long with them--"

She had reached the crest of the hill and the factory came to her view. A
breeze was rising from the river and as she looked down at the scene
below, as her forbears had looked so many times before her, she felt as a
sailor from the north might feel when after drifting around in drowsy
tropic seas, he comes at last to his own home port and feels the clean
wind whip his face and blow away his languor.

The old familiar office seemed to be waiting for her, the pictures
regarding her as though they were saying "Where have you been, young
lady? We began to think you had gone." Through the window sounded the old
symphony, the roar of the falls above the hum of the shops, the choruses
and variations of well-nigh countless tools, each having its own
particular note or song.

Mary's eyes shone bright.

Gone, she found, were her feeling of uncertainty, her sighs of regret.
Here at last was something real, something definite, something noble and
great in the work of the world.

"And all mine," she thought with an almost passionate feeling of
possession. "All mine--mine--mine--"

Archey was the first to come in, and it only needed a glance to see that
Archey was unhappy.

"I'm afraid the men in the automatic room ar