"Good-night!" he whispered through his shut fingers. Julia slipped
softly away, closing the door of her bedroom noiselessly behind her.
Anna was asleep in the upper bed, lying flat on her back, with her
lovely hair falling loosely about her flushed little face. The little
cabin bedroom was as sweet as the surrounding woodland, wide-open
windows admitted the fragrant coolness of the spring night. There was no
moon, but the sky that arched high above the little valley was thickly
spattered with stars. Richie's cat, a shadow among paler shadows, leaped
swiftly over the new grass. Julia got the milky odour of buttercups, the
breath of the little Persian lilac that flanked one end of the porch.
Her heart was beating thickly and excitedly, she did not want to think
why. Through her brain swept a confusion of thoughts, thoughts
disconnected and chaotic. She tried to remember just what words on her
part--on Richard's--had led to that strange mad moment of revelation,
but the memory of the moment itself overleaped all those preceding it.
Julia knelt, her elbows on the window sill, and felt merely that she
never wanted to move again.
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