Two weeks later the news of the Breckenridge divorce burst like a bomb

in the social sky. Immediately pictures of the lovely wife, of

Clarence, of the town house and the country house began to flood the

evening papers, and even the morning journals found room for a column

or two of the affair on inside pages. Clarence was tracked to his

mountain retreat, and as much as possible was made of his refusal to be

interviewed. Mrs. Breckenridge was nowhere to be found.

The cold wind of publicity could not indeed reach her in the quiet

lanes and along the sandy shore of Quaker Bridge. Rachael, known to

everyone but her kind old landlady as "Mrs. Prescott," could even

glance interestedly at the papers now and then. Her identity, in three

long and peaceful months, was not even so much as suspected. She did

not mind the plain country table, the inconvenient old farmhouse; she

loved her new solitude. Unquestioned, she dreamed through the idle

days, reading, thinking, sleeping like a child. She spent long hours on

the seashore watching the lazy, punctual flow and tumble of the waves

that were never hurried, never delayed; her eyes followed the flashing

wings of the gulls, the even, steady upward beat of strong pinions, the

downward drifting through blue air that was of all motion the most

perfect.

And sometimes in those hours it seemed to Rachael that she was no more

in the great scheme of things than one of these myriad gulls, than one

of the grains of sand through which she ran her white, unringed

fingers. Clarence was a dream, Belvedere Bay was a dream; it was all a

hazy, dim memory now: the cards and the cocktails, the dancing and

tennis, the powder and lip-red in hot rooms and about glittering dinner

tables. What a hurry and bustle and rush it all was--for nothing. The

only actualities were the white sand and the cool green water, and the

summer sun beating down warmly upon her bare head.

She awakened every morning in a large, bright, bare room whose three

big windows looked into rustling maple boughs. The steady rushing of

surf could be heard just beyond the maples. Sometimes a soft fog

wrapped the trees and the lawn in its pale folds, and the bell down at

the lighthouse ding-donged through the whole warm, silent morning, but

more often there was sunshine, and Rachael took her book to the beach,

got into her stiff, dry bathing suit, in a small, hot bathhouse

furnished only by a plank bench and a few rusty nails, and plunged into

the delicious breakers she loved so well. Busy babies, digging on the

beach, befriended her, and she grew to love their sudden tears and more

sudden laughter, their stammered confidences, and the touch of their

warm, sandy little hands. She became an adept at pinning up their tiny

bagging undergarments, and at disentangling hat elastics from the soft

hair at the back of moist little necks. If a mother occasionally showed

signs of friendliness, Rachael accepted the overture pleasantly, but

managed to wander next day to some other part of the beach, and so

evade the definite beginning of a friendship.

The warm sunshine, flavored by the salty sea, soaked into her very

bones. Everything about Quaker Bridge was bare, and worn, and clean;

nothing was crowded, or hurried, or false. Barren dunes, and white,

bleaching sand, colorless little houses facing the elm-lined main

street, colorless planks outlining the road to the water; the

monotonous austerity, the pure severity of the little ocean village was

full of satisfying charm for her. If she climbed a sandy rise beyond

Mrs. Dimmick's cottage, and faced the north, she could see the white

roadway, winding down to Clark's Bar, where the ocean fretted year

after year to free the waters of the bay only twelve feet away. Beyond

on the slope, was the village known as Clark's Hills, a smother of

great trees with a weather-whipped spire and an occasional bit of roof

or fence in evidence, to show the habitation of man.

In other directions, facing east or west or south, there was nothing

but the sand, and the coarse straggling bushes that rooted in the sand,

and the clear blue dome of the sky. Rachael, whose life had been too

crowded, gloried in the honey-scented emptiness of the sand hills, the

measureless, heaving surface of the ocean, the dizzying breadth and

space in which, an infinitesimal speck, she moved.

She had sensibly taken her landlady, old Mrs. Dimmick, into her

confidence, and pleased to be part of the little intrigue, and perhaps

pleased as well to rent her two best rooms to this charming stranger,

the old lady protected the secret gallantly. It was all much more

simple than Rachael had feared it would be. Nobody questioned her,

nobody indeed paid attention to her; she wandered about in a blissful

isolation as good for her tired soul as was the primitive life she led

for her tired body.

Yet every one of the idle days left its mark upon her spirit; gradually

a great many things that had seemed worth while in the old life showed

their true and petty and sordid natures now; gradually the purifying

waters of solitude washed her soul clean. She began to plan for the

future--a future so different from the crowded and hurried past!

Warren Gregory's letters came regularly, postmarked London, Paris,

Rome. They were utterly and wholly satisfying to Rachael, and they went

far to make these days the happiest in her life. Her heart would throb

like a girl's when she saw, on the little drop-leaf table in the

hallway, the big square envelope addressed in the doctor's fine hand;

sometimes--again like a girl--she carried it down to the beach before

breaking the seal, thrilled with a thousand hopes, unready to put them

to the test. Yesterday's letter had said: "My dearest,"--had said: "Do

you realize that I will see you in five weeks?" Could to-day's be half

as sweet?

She was never disappointed. The strong tide of his devotion for her

rose steadily through letter after letter; in August the glowing

letters of July seemed cold by contrast, in September every envelope

brought her a flaming brand to add to the fires that were beginning to

blaze within her. In late September there was an interval; and Rachael

told herself that now he was on the ocean--now he was on the ocean--

By this time the digging babies were gone, the beach was almost

deserted. Little office clerks, men and women, coming down for the two

weeks of rest that break the fifty of work, still arrived on the late

train Saturday, and went away on the last train two weeks from the

following Sunday, but there were no more dances at the one big hotel,

and some of the smaller hotels were closed. The tall, plain, attractive

woman--with the three children and the baby, who drove over from

Clark's Hills every day, and, who, for all her graying hair and

sun-bleached linens, seemed to be of Rachael's own world--still brought

her shrieking and splashing trio to the beach, but she had confided to

Mrs. Dimmick, who had known her for many summers, that even her long

holiday was drawing to a close. Mrs. Dimmick brought extra blankets

down from the attic, and began to talk of seeing her daughter in

California. Rachael, drinking in the glory of the dying summer, found

each day more exquisite than the last, and gratified her old hostess by

expressing her desire to spend all the rest of her life in Quaker

Bridge.

She had, indeed, come to like the villagers thoroughly; not the summer

population, for the guests at all summer hotels are alike

uninteresting, but for the quiet life that went on year in and year out

in the little side streets: the women who washed clothes and swept

porches, who gardened with tow-headed babies tumbling around them, who

went on Sundays to the little bald-faced church at ten o'clock. Rachael

got into talk with them, trying to realize what it must be to walk a

hot mile for the small transaction of selling a dozen eggs for thirty

cents, to spend a long morning carefully darning an old, clean

Nottingham lace curtain that could be replaced for three dollars. She

read their lives as if they had been an absorbing book laid open for

her eyes. The coming of the Holladay baby, the decline and death of old

Mrs. Bird, the narrow escape of Sammy Tew from drowning, and the

thorough old-fashioned thrashing that Mary Trimble gave her oldest son

for taking a little boy like Sammy out beyond the "heads,"--all these

things sank deep into the consciousness of the new Rachael. She liked

the whitewashed cottages with their blazing geraniums and climbing

honeysuckle, and the back-door yards, with chickens fluffing in the

dust, and old men, seated on upturned old boats, smoking and whittling

as they watched the babies "while Lou gets her work caught up".

October came in on a storm, the most terrifying storm Rachael had ever

seen. Late in the afternoon of September's last golden day a wind began

to rise among the dunes, and Rachael, who, wrapped in a white wooly

coat and deep in a book, had been lying for an hour or two on the

beach, was suddenly roused by a shower of sand, and sat up to look at

the sky. Clouds, low and gray, were moving rapidly overhead, and

although the tide was only making, and high water would not be due for

another hour, the waves, emerald green, swift, and capped with white,

were already touching the landmost water-mark.

Quickly getting to her feet, she started briskly for home, following

the broken line of kelp and weeds, grasses, driftwood, and cocoanut

shells that fringed the tide-mark, and rather fascinated by the sudden

ominous change in sea and sky. In the little village there was great

clapping of shutters and straining of clotheslines, distracted,

bareheaded women ran about their dooryards, doors banged, everywhere

was rush and flutter.

"D'clare if don't think th' folks at Clark's Hills going to be shut of

completely," said Mrs. Dimmick, bustling about with housewifely

activity, and evidently, like all the village and like Rachael herself,

a little exhilarated by the oncoming siege.

"What will they do?" Rachael demanded, unhooking a writhing hammock

from the porch as the old woman briskly dragged the big cane rockers

indoors.

"Oh, ther' wunt no hurt come t'um," Mrs. Dimmick said. "But--come an

awful mean tide, Clark's Bar is under water. They'll jest have to wait

until she goes down, that's all."

"Shell I bring up some candles from suller; we ain't got much

karosene!" Florrie, the one maid, demanded excitedly. Chess, the hired

man, who was Florrie's "steady," began to bring wood in by the armful,

and fling it down by the airtight stove that had been set up only a few

days before.

The wind began to howl about the roof; trees in the dooryard rocked and

arched. Darkness fell at four o'clock, and the deafening roar of the

ocean seemed an actual menace as the night came down. Chess and

Florrie, after supper, frankly joined the family group in the

sitting-room, a group composed only of Rachael and Mrs. Dimmick and two

rather terrified young stenographers from the city.

These two did not go to bed, but Rachael went upstairs as usual at ten

o'clock, and drifted to sleep in a world of creaking, banging, and

roaring. A confusion and excited voices below stairs brought her down

again rather pale, in her long wrapper, at three. The Barwicks, mother,

father, and three babies, had left their beach cottage in the night and

the storm to seek safer shelter and the welcome sound of other voices

than their own.

After that there was little sleep for anyone. Still in the roaring

darkness the clocks presently announced morning, and a neighbor's boy,

breathless, dripping in tarpaulins, was blown against the door, and

burst in to say with youthful relish that the porches of the Holcomb

house were under water, and the boardwalk washed away, and folks said

that the road was all gone betwixt here and the lighthouse. Rain was

still falling in sheets, and the wind was still high. Rachael braved

it, late in the afternoon, to go out and see with her own eyes that the

surf was foaming and frothing over the deserted bandstand at the end of

the main street, and got back to the shelter of the house wet and

gasping, and with the first little twist of personal fear at her heart.

Suppose that limitless raging green wall down there rose another

ten--another twenty--feet, swept deep and roaring and resistless over

little Quaker Bridge, plunged them all for a few struggling, hopeless

moments into its emerald depths, and then washed the little loosely

drifting bodies that had been men and women far out to sea again?

What could one do? No trains came into Quaker Bridge to-day; it was

understood that there were washouts all along the line. Rachael sat in

the dark, stuffy little sitting-room with the placid Barwick baby

drowsing in her lap, and at last her face reflected the nervous

uneasiness of the other women. Every time an especially heavy rush of

rain or wind struck the unsubstantial little house, Mrs. Barwick said,

"Oh, my!" in patient, hopeless terror, and the two young women looked

at each other with a quick hissing breath of fear.

The night was long with horror. There were other refugees in Mrs.

Dimmick's house now; there were in all fifteen people sitting around

her little stove listening to the wind and the ocean. The old lady

herself was the most cheerful of the group, although Rachael and one or

two of the others managed an appearance at least of calm.

"Declare," said the hostess, more than once, "dunt see what we's all

thinkin' of not to git over to Clark's Hills 'fore the bar was under

water! They've got sixty-foot elevation there!"

"I'd just as soon try to get there now," said Miss Stokes of New York

eagerly.

"There's waves eight feet high washin' over that bar," Ernest Barwick

said, and something in the simple words made little Miss Stokes look

sick for a moment.

"What's our elevation?" Rachael asked.

"'Bout--" Mr. Barwick paused. "But you can't tell nothing by that," he

contented himself with remarking after a moment's thought.

"But I never heard--I never HEARD of the sea coming right over a whole

village!" Rachael hated herself for the fear that dragged the words

out, and the white lips that spoke them.

"Neither did I!" said half a dozen voices. There was silence while the

old clock on the mantel wheezed out a lugubrious eight strokes. "LORD,

how it rains!" muttered Emily Barwick.

Nine o'clock--ten o'clock. The young women, the old woman, the maid and

man who would be married some day if they lived, the husband and wife

who had been lovers like them only a few years ago, and who now had

these three little lives to guard, all sat wrapped in their own

thoughts. Rachael sat staring at the stove's red eye, thinking,

thinking, thinking. She thought of Warren Gregory; his steamer must be

in now, he must be with his mother in the old house, and planning to

see her any day. To-morrow--if there was a to-morrow--might bring his

telegram. What would his life be if he might never see her again? She

could not even leave him a note, or a word; on this eve of their

meeting, were they to be parted forever? Should she never tell him how

dearly--how dearly--she loved him? Tears came to her eyes, her heart

was wrung with exquisite sorrow.

She thought of Billy--poor little Billy--who had never had a mother,

who needed a mother so sadly, and of her own mother, dead now, and of

the old blue coat of thirteen years ago, and the rough blue hat. She

thought of her great-grandmother in the little whitewashed California

cottage under the shadow of the blue mountains, with the lilacs and

marigolds in the yard. And colored by her new great love, and by the

solemn fears of this endless night, Rachael found a tenderness in her

heart for all those shadowy figures that had played a part in her life.

At midnight there came a thundering crash on the ocean side of the

house.

"Oh, God, IT'S THE SEA!" screamed Emily Barwick. They all rushed to the

door and flung it open, and in a second were out in the wild blackness

of the night. Still the roaring and howling and shrieking of the

elements, still the infuriated booming of the surf, but--thank God--no

new sound. There was no break in the flying darkness above them; the

street was a running sheet of water in the dark.

Yet strangely they all went back into the house vaguely quieted.

Rachael presently said that no matter what was going to happen, she was

too cold and tired to stay up any longer, and went upstairs to bed.

Miss Stokes and Miss McKim settled themselves in their chairs; Emily

Barwick went to sleep with her head against her husband's thin young

shoulder. Somebody suggested coffee, and there was a general move

toward the kitchen.

Rachael, a little bewildered, woke in heavenly sunlight in exactly the

position she had taken when she crept into bed the night before. For a

few minutes she lay staring at the bright old homely room, and at the

clock ticking briskly toward nine.

"Dear Lord, what a thing sunshine is?" she said then slowly. No need to

ask of the storm with this celestial reassurance flooding the room. But

after a few moments she got up and went to the window. The trees,

battered and torn, were ruffling such leaves as were left them

gallantly in the wind, the paths still ran yellow water, the roadway

was a muddy waste, eaves were still gurgling, and everywhere was the

drip and splash of water. But the sky was clear and blue, and the air

as soft as milk.

As eager as a child Rachael dressed and ran downstairs, and was out in

the new world. The fresh wind whipped a glorious color into her face;

the whole of sea and sky and earth seemed to be singing.

Trees were down, fences were down, autumn gardens were all a wreck; and

the ocean, when she came to the shore, was still rolling wild and high.

But it was blue now, and the pure sky above it was blue, and there was

utter protection and peace in the sunny air. Landmarks all along the

shore were washed away, and beyond the first line of dunes were pools

left by the great tide, scummy and sinking fast into the sand, to leave

only a fringe of bubbles behind. Minor wreckages of all sorts lay

scattered all along the beach: poles and ropes, boxes and barrels.

Rachael walked on and on, breathing deep, swept out of herself by the

fresh glory of the singing morning. Presently she would go back, and

there would be Warren's letter, or his telegram, or perhaps himself,

and then their golden days would begin--their happy time! But even

Warren to-day could not intrude upon her mood of utter gratitude and

joy in just living--just being young and alive in a world that could

hold such a sea and such a sky.

A full mile from the village, along the ocean shore, a stream came down

from under a cliff, a stream, as Rachael and investigating children had

often proved to their own satisfaction, that rose in a small but

eminently satisfactory cave. The storm had washed several great smooth

logs of driftwood into the cave, and beyond them to-day there was such

a gurgling and churning going on that Rachael, eager not to miss any

effect of the storm, stepped cautiously inside.

The augmented little river was three times its usual size, and was

further made unmanageable by the impeding logs swept in by the high

tide. Straw and weeds and rubbish of every description choked its

course, and little foaming currents and backwaters almost filled the

cave with their bubbling and swirling.

Rachael, with a few casual pushes of a sturdy little shoe, accomplished

such surprising results in freeing and directing the stream that she

fell upon it in sudden serious earnest, grasping a long pole the better

to push obstructing matters aside, and growing rosy and breathless over

her self-imposed and senseless undertaking.

She had just loosened a whole tangle of wreckage, and had straightened

herself up with a long, triumphant "Ah-h!" of relief, as the current

rushed it away, when a shadow fell over the mouth of the cave. Looking

about in quick, instinctive fear, she saw Warren Gregory smiling at her.

For only one second she hesitated, all girlhood's radiant shyness in

her face. Then she was in his arms, and clinging to him, and for a few

minutes they did not speak, eyes and lips together in the wild rapture

of meeting.

"Oh, Greg--Greg--Greg!" Rachael laughed and cried and sang the words

together. "When did you come, and how did you get here? Tell me--tell

me all about it!" But before he could begin to answer her their eager

joy carried them both far away from all the conversational landmarks,

and again they had breath only for monosyllables, instinct only to

cling to each other.

"My girl, my own girl!" Warren Gregory said. "Oh, how I've missed

you--and you're more beautiful than ever--did you know it? More

beautiful even than I remembered you to be, and that was beautiful

enough!"

"Oh, hush!" she said, laughing, her fingers over the mouth that praised

her, his arm still holding her tight.

"I'll never hush again, my darling! Never, never in all the years we

spend together! I am going to tell you a hundred times a day that you

are the most beautiful, and the dearest--Oh, Rachael, Rachael, shall I

tell you something? It's October! Do you know what that means?"

"Yes, I suppose I do!" She laughed, and colored exquisitely, drawing

herself back the length of their linked arms.

"Do you know what you're going to BE in about thirty-six hours?"

"Now--you embarrass me! Was--was anything settled?"

"Shall you like being Mrs. Gregory?"

"Greg--" Tears came to her eyes. "You don't know how much!" she said in

a whisper.

They sat down on a great log, washed silver white with long years of

riding unguided through the seas, and all the wonderful world of blue

sky and white sand might have been made for them. Rachael's hand lay in

her lover's, her glorious eyes rarely left his face. Browned by his

summer of travel, she found him better than ever to look upon; hungry

after these waiting months, every tone of his voice held for her a

separate delight.

"Did you ever dream of happiness like this, Rachael?"

"Never--never in my wildest flights. Not even in the past few months!"

"What--didn't trust me?"

"No, not that. But I've been rebuilding, body and soul. I didn't think

of the future or the past. It was all present."

"With me," he said, "it was all future. I've been counting the days.

I've not done that since I was at school! Rachael, do you remember our

talk the night after the Berry Stokes' dinner?"

"Do I remember it?"

"Ah, my dear, if anyone had said that night that in six months we would

be sitting here, and that you would have promised yourself to me! You

don't know what my wife is going to mean to me, my dearest. I can't

believe it yet!"

"It is going to mean everything in life to me," she said seriously. "I

mean to be the best wife a man ever had. If loving counts--"

"Do you mean that?" he said eagerly. "Say it--do you mean that you love

me?"

"Love you?" She stood up, pressing both hands over her heart as if

there were real pain there. For a few paces she walked away from him,

and, as he followed her, she turned upon him the extraordinary beauty

of her face transfigured with strong emotion.

"Greg," she said quietly, "I didn't know there was such love! I've

heard it called fire and pain and restlessness, but this thing is ME!

It is burning in me like flame, it is consuming me. To be with

you"--she caught his wrist with one hand, and with her free hand

pointed out across the smiling ocean--"to be with you and KNOW you were

mine, I could walk straight out into that water, and end it all, and be

glad--glad--glad of the chance! I loved you yesterday, but what is this

to-day, when you have kissed me, and held me in your arms!" Her voice

broke on something like a sob, but her eyes were smiling. "All my life

I've been asleep," said Rachael. "I'm awake now--I'm awake now! I begin

to realize how helpless one is--to realize what I should have done if

you hadn't come--"

"My darling," Gregory said, his arms about her "what else--feeling as

we feel--could I have done?"

Held in his embrace, she rested her hands upon his shoulders, and

looked wistfully into his eyes.

"It is as WE feel, isn't it?" she said. "I mean, it isn't only me?

You--you love me?"

Looking down at her dropped, velvety lashes, feeling the warm strong

beat of her heart against his, holding close as he did all her glowing

and fragrant beauty, Warren Gregory felt it the most exquisite moment

of his life. Her youth, her history, her wonderful poise and sureness

so intoxicatingly linked with all a girl's unexpected shyness and

adorable uncertainties, all these combined to enthrall the man who had

admired her for many years and loved her for more than one.

"Love you?" he asked, claiming again the lips she yielded with such a

delicious widening of her eyes and quickening of breath.

"You see, Warren," she said presently, "I'm not a girl. I give myself

to you with a knowledge and a joy no girl could possibly have. I don't

want to coquette and delay. I want to be your wife, and to learn your

faults, and have you learn mine, and settle down into harness--one

year, five years--ten years married! Oh, you don't know how I LONG to

be ten years married. I shan't mind a bit being nearly forty.

Forty--doesn't it sound SETTLED, and sedate--and that's what I want.

I--I shall love getting gray, and feeling that you and I don't care so

much about going places, don't you know? We'll like better just being

home together, won't we? We're older than most people now, aren't we?"

He laughed aloud at the bright face so enchantingly young in its

restored beauty. He had expected to find her charming, but in this new

phase of girlishness, of happiness, she was a thousand times more

charming than he had dreamed. It was hard to believe that this eager

girl in a striped blue and yellow and purple skirt, and rough white

crash hat, was the bored, the remote, the much-feared Mrs. Clarence

Breckenridge. Something free and sweet and virginal had come back to

her, or been born in her. She was like no phase of the many phases in

which he had known her; she was a Rachael who had never known the

sordid, the disillusioning side of life. Even her seriousness had the

confident, eager quality of youth, and her gayety was as pure as a

child's. She had cast off the old sophistication, the old recklessness

of speech; she was not even interested in the old associates. The world

for her was all in him and their love for each other, and she walked

back to Quaker Bridge, at his side, too wholly swept away from all

self-consciousness to know or to care that they were at once the target

for all eyes.

A wonderful day followed, many wonderful days. Doctor Gregory's great

touring car and his livened man were at Mrs. Dimmick's door when they

got back, an incongruous note in little Quaker Bridge, still gasping

from the great storm.

"Your car?" Rachael said. "You drove down?"

"Yesterday. I put up at Valentine's--George Valentine's, you know, at

Clark's Hills."

"Oh, that's my nice lady--gray haired, and with three children?"

Rachael said eagerly. "Do you know her?"

"Know her? Valentine is my closest associate. They meet us in town

to-morrow: he's to be best man. You'll have to have them to dinner once

a month for the rest of your life!"

The picture brought her happy color, the shy look he loved.

"I'm glad, Greg. I like her immensely!"

They were at the car; she must flush again at the chauffeur's greeting,

finding a certain grave significance, a certain acceptance, in his

manner.

"Wife and baby well, Martin?"

"Very well, thank you, Mrs. Breckenridge."

"Still in Belvedere Hills?"

"Well, just at present, yes, Madam."

"You see, I am looking for suitable quarters for all hands," Doctor

Gregory said, his laugh drowning hers, his eyes feasting on her

delicious confusion. She was aware that feminine eyes from the house

were watching her. Presently she had kissed Mrs. Dimmick good-bye.

Warren had put his man in the tonneau; he would take the wheel himself

for the three hours' run into town.

"Good-bye, my dear!" said the old lady, adding with an innocent vacuity

of manner quite characteristic of Quaker Bridge. "Let me know when the

weddin's goin' to be!"

"I'll let you know right now," said Doctor Gregory, who, gloved and

coated, was bustling about the car, deep in the mysterious rites

incidental to starting. "It's going to be to-morrow!"

"Good grief!" exclaimed Mrs. Dimmick delightedly. "Well," she added,

"folks down here think you've got an awfully pretty bride!"

"I'm glad she's up to the standard down here," Warren Gregory observed.

"Nobody seems to think much of her looks up in the city!"

Rachael laughed and leaned from her place beside the driver to kiss the

old lady again and to wave a general good-bye to Florrie and Chess and

the group on the porch. As smoothly as if she were launched in air the

great car sprang into motion; the storm-blown cottages, the battered

dooryards, the great shabby trees over the little post office all swept

by. They passed the turning that led to Clark's Bar, and a weather-worn

sign-post that read "Quaker Bridge, 1 mile." It was not a dream, it was

all wonderfully true: this was Greg beside her, and they were going to

be married!

Rachael settled back against the deep, soft cushions in utter content.

To be flying through the soft Indian summer sunshine, alone with Greg,

to actually touch his big shoulder with her own, to command his

interest, his laughter, his tenderness, at will--after these lonely

months it was a memorable and an enchanting experience. Their talk

drifted about uncontrolled, as talk after long silence must: now it was

a waiter on the ocean liner of whom Gregory spoke, or perhaps the story

of a small child's rescue from the waves, from Rachael. They spoke of

the roads, splendidly hard and clean after the rain, and of the

villages through which they rushed.

But over their late luncheon, in a roadside inn, the talk fell into

deeper grooves, their letters, their loneliness, and their new plans,

and when the car at last reached the traffic of the big bridge, and

Rachael caught her first glimpse of the city under its thousand smoking

chimneys, there had entered into their relationship a new sacred

element, something infinitely tender and almost sad, a dependence upon

each other, a oneness in which Rachael could get a foretaste of the

exquisite communion so soon to be.

They were spinning up the avenue, through a city humming with the first

reviving breath of winter. They were at the great hotel, and Rachael

was laughing in Elinor Vanderwall's embrace. The linen shop, the

milliner, a dinner absurdly happy, and one of the new plays--a sunshiny

morning when she and Elinor breakfasted in their rooms, and opened box

after box of gowns and hats--the hours fled by like a dream.

"Nervous, Rachael?" asked Miss Vanderwall of the vision that looked out

from Rachael's mirror.

"Not a bit!" the wife-to-be answered, feeling as she said it that her

hands, busy with long gloves, were shaking, and her knees almost

unready to support her.

"It must be wonderful to marry a man like Greg," said the bridesmaid

thoughtfully. "He simply IS everything and HAS everything--"

"Ah, Elinor, it's wonderful to marry the man you love!" Rachael turned

from the mirror, her blue eyes misted with tears under the brim of her

wedding hat.

"YOU!" Elinor smiled. "That I should live to see it! You--in love!"

"And unashamed, and proud of it!" Rachael said with a tremulous laugh.

"Are you all ready? Shall we go down?" She turned at the door and put

one arm about her friend. "Kiss me, Elinor, and wish me joy," said she.

"I don't have to!" asserted Miss Vanderwall, with a hearty kiss

nevertheless, "for it will be your own fault entirely if there's ever

the littlest, teeniest cloud in the sky!"




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