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Title: The fire
Author: Helen R. Hull
Illustrator: Edna L. Crompton
Release date: July 27, 2026 [eBook #79192]
Language: English
Original publication: New York: The Century, 1917
Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/79192
Credits: Jens Sadowski. This file was produced from images generously made available by The Internet Archive.
*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE FIRE ***
The Fire
Helen R. Hull
Illustrations by Edna L. Crompton
The Century Magazine, vol. 95, Nov. 1917, pp. 105-114.
Cynthia blotted the entry in the old ledger and scowled across the empty
office at the door. Mrs. Moriety had left it ajar when she departed with
her receipt for the weekly fifty cents on her “lot.” If you supplied the
missing gilt letters, you could read the sign on the glass of the upper
half: “H. P. Bates. Real Estate. Notary Public.” Through the door at
Cynthia’s elbow came the rumbling voice of old Fleming, the lawyer down
the hall; he had come in for his Saturday night game of chess with her
father.
Cynthia pushed the ledger away from her, and with her elbows on the
spotted, green felt of the desk, her fingers burrowing into her cheeks,
waited for two minutes by the nickel clock; then, with a quick, awkward
movement, she pushed back her chair and plunged to the doorway, her
young face twisted in a sort of fluttering resolution.
“Father—”
Her father jerked his head toward her, his fingers poised over a pawn.
Old Fleming did not look up.
“Father, I don’t think anybody else will be in.”
“Well, go on home, then.” Her father bent again over the squares, the
light shining strongly on the thin places about his temples.
“Father, please,”—Cynthia spoke hurriedly,—“you aren’t going for a
while? I want to go down to Miss Egert’s for a minute.”
“Eh? What’s that?” He leaned back in his chair now, and Mr. Fleming
lifted his severe, black beard to look at this intruder. “What for? You
can’t take any more painting lessons. Your mother doesn’t want you going
there any more.”
“I just want to get some things I left there. I can get back to go home
with you.”
“But your mother said she didn’t like your hanging around down there in
an empty house with an old maid. What did she tell you about it?”
“Couldn’t I just get my sketches, Father, and tell Miss Egert I’m not
coming any more? She would think it was awfully funny if I didn’t. I
won’t stay. But she—she’s been good to me—”
“What set your mother against her, then? What you been doing down
there?”
Cynthia twisted her hands together, her eyes running from Fleming’s
amused stare to her father’s indecision. Only an accumulated
determination could have carried her on into speech.
“I’ve just gone down once a week for a lesson. I want to get my things.
If I’m not going, I ought to tell her.”
“Why didn’t you tell her that last week?”
“I kept hoping I could go on.”
“Um.” Her father’s glance wavered toward his game. “Isn’t it too late?”
“Just eight, Father.” She stepped near her father, color flooding her
cheeks. “If you’ll give me ten cents, I can take the car—”
“Well—” He dug into his pocket, nodding at Fleming’s grunt, “The women
always want cash, eh, Bates?”
Then Cynthia, the dime pressed into her palm, tiptoed across to the nail
where her hat and sweater hung, seized them, and still on tiptoe, lest
she disturb the game again, ran out to the head of the stairs.
She was trembling as she pulled on her sweater; as she ran down the dark
steps to the street the tremble changed to a quiver of excitement.
Suppose her father had known just what her mother _had_ said! That she
could not see Miss Egert again; could never go hurrying down to the
cluttered room they called the studio for more of those strange hours of
eagerness and pain when she bent over the drawing-board, struggling with
the mysteries of color. That last sketch—the little, purpling
mint-leaves from the garden—Miss Egert had liked that. And they thought
she could leave those sketches there! Leave Miss Egert, too, wondering
why she never came again! She hurried to the corner, past the bright
store-windows. In thought she could see Miss Egert setting out the jar
of brushes, the dishes of water, pushing back the litter of magazines
and books to make room for the drawing-board, waiting for her to come.
Oh, she had to go once more, black as her disobedience was!
The half-past-eight car was just swinging round the curve. She settled
herself behind two German housewives, shawls over their heads,
market-baskets beside them. They lived out at the end of the street; one
of them sometimes came to the office with payments on her son’s lot.
Cynthia pressed against the dirty window, fearful lest she miss the
corner. There it was, the new street light shining on the sedate old
house! She ran to the platform, pushing against the arm the conductor
extended.
“Wait a minute, there!” He released her as the car stopped, and she fled
across the street.
In front of the house she could not see a light, up-stairs or down,
except staring reflections in the windows from the white arc light. She
walked past the dark line of box which led to the front door. At the
side of the old square dwelling jutted a new, low wing; and there in two
windows were soft slits of light along the curtain-edges. Cynthia walked
along a little dirt path to a door at the side of the wing. Standing on
the door-step, she felt in the shadow for the knocker. As she let it
fall, from the garden behind her came a voice:
“I’m out here. Who is it?” There was a noise of feet hurrying through
dead leaves, and as Cynthia turned to answer, out of the shadow moved a
blur of face and white blouse.
“Cynthia! How nice!” The woman touched Cynthia’s shoulder as she pushed
open the door. “There, come in.”
The candles on the table bent their flames in the draft; Cynthia
followed Miss Egert into the room.
“You’re busy?” Miss Egert had stood up by the door an old wooden-toothed
rake. “I don’t want to bother you.” Cynthia’s solemn, young eyes
implored the woman and turned hastily away. The intensity of defiance
which had brought her at such an hour left her confused.
“Bother? I was afraid I had to have my grand bonfire alone. Now we can
have it a party. You’d like to?”
Miss Egert darted across to straighten one of the candles. The light
caught in the folds of her crumpled blouse, in the soft, drab hair blown
out around her face.
“I can’t stay very long.” Cynthia stared about the room, struggling to
hide her turmoil under ordinary casualness. “You had the carpenter fix
the bookshelves, didn’t you?”
“Isn’t it nice now! All white and gray and restful—just a spark of life
in that mad rug. A good place to sit in and grow old.”
Cynthia looked at the rug, a bit of scarlet Indian weaving. She wouldn’t
see it again! The thought poked a derisive finger into her heart.
“Shall we sit down just a minute and then go have the fire?”
Cynthia dropped into the wicker chair, wrenching her fingers through one
another.
“My brother came in to-night, his last attempt to make me see reason,”
said Miss Egert.
Cynthia lifted her eyes. Miss Egert wasn’t wondering why she had come;
she could stay without trying to explain.
Miss Egert wound her arms about her knees as she went on talking. Her
slight body was wrenched a little out of symmetry, as though from
straining always for something uncaptured; there was the same lack of
symmetry in her face, in her eyebrows, in the line of her mobile lips.
But her eyes had nothing fugitive, nothing pursuing in their soft, gray
depth. Their warm, steady eagerness shone out in her voice, too, in its
swift inflections.
[Illustration: “‘YOU CAN’T TAKE ANY MORE PAINTING LESSONS. YOUR MOTHER
DOESN’T WANT YOU GOING THERE ANY MORE’”]
“I tried to show him it wasn’t a bit disgraceful for me to live here in
a wing of my own instead of being a sort of nurse-maid adjunct in his
house.” She laughed, a soft, throaty sound. “It’s my house. It’s all I
have left to keep me a person, you see. I won’t get out and be
respectable in his eyes.”
“He didn’t mind your staying here and taking care of—them!” cried
Cynthia.
“It’s respectable, dear, for an old maid to care for her father and
mother; but when they die she ought to be useful to some one else
instead of renting her house and living on an edge of it.”
“Oh,”—Cynthia leaned forward,—“I should think you’d hate him! I think
families are—terrible!”
“Hate him?” Miss Egert smiled. “He’s nice. He just doesn’t agree with
me. As long as he lets the children come over—I told him I meant to have
a beautiful time with them, with my real friends—with you.”
Cynthia shrank into her chair, her eyes tragic again.
“Come, let’s have our bonfire!” Miss Egert, with a quick movement, stood
in front of Cynthia, one hand extended.
Cynthia crouched away from the hand.
“Miss Egert,”—her voice came out in a desperate little gasp,—“I can’t
come down any more. I can’t take any more painting lessons.” She
stopped. Miss Egert waited, her head tipped to one side. “Mother doesn’t
think I better. I came down—after my things.”
“They’re all in the workroom.” Miss Egert spoke quietly. “Do you want
them now?”
“Yes.” Cynthia pressed her knuckles against her lips. Over her hand her
eyes cried out. “Yes, I better get them,” she said heavily.
Miss Egert, turning slowly, lifted a candle from the table.
“We’ll have to take this. The wiring isn’t done.” She crossed the room,
her thin fingers, not quite steady, bending around the flame.
Cynthia followed through a narrow passage. Miss Egert pushed open a
door, and the musty odor of the store-room floated out into a queer
chord with the fresh plaster of the hall.
“Be careful of that box!” Miss Egert set the candle on a pile of trunks.
“I’ve had to move all the truck from the attic and studio in here. Your
sketches are in the portfolio, and that’s—somewhere!”
Cynthia stood in the doorway, watching Miss Egert bend over a pile of
canvases, throwing up a grotesque, rounded shadow on the wall. Round the
girl’s throat closed a ring of iron.
“Here they are, piled up—”
Cynthia edged between the boxes. Miss Egert was dragging the black
portfolio from beneath a pile of books.
“And here’s the book I wanted you to see.” The pile slipped crashing to
the floor as Miss Egert pulled out a magazine. “Never mind those. See
here.” She dropped into the chair from which she had knocked the books,
the portfolio under one arm, the free hand running through the pages of
an old art magazine. The chair swung slightly; Cynthia, peering down
between the boxes, gave a startled “Oh!”
“What is it?” Miss Egert followed Cynthia’s finger. “The chair?” She was
silent a moment. “Do you think I keep my mother prisoner here in a
wheel-chair now that she is free?” She ran her hand along the worn arm.
“I tried to give it to an old ladies’ home, but it was too used up. They
wanted more style.”
“But doesn’t it remind you—” Cynthia hesitated.
“It isn’t fair to remember the years she had to sit here waiting to die.
You didn’t know her. I’ve been going back to the real years—” Miss Egert
smiled at Cynthia’s bewildered eyes. “Here, let’s look at these.” She
turned another page. “See, Cynthia. Aren’t they swift and glad? That’s
what I was trying to tell you the other day. See that arm, and the
drapery there! Just a line—” The girl bent over the page, frowning at
the details the quick finger pointed out. “Don’t they catch you along
with them?” She held the book out at arm’s-length, squinting at the
figures. “Take it along. There are several more.” She tucked the book
into the portfolio and rose. “Come on; we’ll have our fire.”
“But, Miss Egert,”—Cynthia’s voice hardened as she was swept back into
her own misery,—“I can’t take it. I can’t come any more.”
“To return a book?” Miss Egert lowered her eyelids as if she were again
sizing up a composition. “You needn’t come just for lessons.”
Cynthia shook her head.
“Mother thinks—” She fell into silence. She couldn’t say what her mother
thought—dreadful things. If she could only swallow the hot pressure in
her throat!
“Oh. I hadn’t understood.” Miss Egert’s fingers paused for a swift touch
on Cynthia’s arm, and then reached for the candle. “You can go on
working by yourself.”
“It isn’t that—” Cynthia struggled an instant, and dropped into silence
again. She couldn’t say out loud any of the things she was feeling.
There were too many walls between feeling and speech: loyalty to her
mother, embarrassment that feelings should come so near words, a fear of
hurting Miss Egert.
“Don’t mind so much, Cynthia.” Miss Egert led the way back to the
living-room. “You can stay for the bonfire? That will be better than
sitting here. Run into the kitchen and bring the matches and
marshmallows—in a dish in the cupboard.”
Cynthia, in the doorway, stared at Miss Egert. Didn’t she care at all!
Then the dumb ache in her throat stopped throbbing as Miss Egert’s gray
eyes held her steadily a moment. She did care! She did! She was just
helping her. Cynthia took the candle and went back through the
passageway to the kitchen, down at the very end.
She made a place on the table in the litter of dishes and milk-bottles
for the candle. The matches had been spilled on the shelf of the stove
and into the sink. Cynthia gathered a handful of the driest.
Shiftlessness was one of her mother’s counts against Miss Egert. Cynthia
flushed as she recalled her stumbling defense: Miss Egert had more
important things to do; dishes were kept in their proper place; and her
mother’s: “Important! Mooning about!”
“Find them, Cynthia?” The clear, low voice came down the hall, and
Cynthia hurried back.
Out in the garden it was quite black. As they came to the far end, the
old stone wall made a dark bank against the sky, with a sharp star over
its edge. Miss Egert knelt; almost with the scratch of the match the
garden leaped into yellow, with fantastic moving shadows from the trees
and in the corner of the wall. She raked leaves over the blaze, pulled
the great mound into firmer shape, and then drew Cynthia back under the
wall to watch. The light ran over her face; the delighted gestures of
her hands were like quick shadows.
“See the old apple-tree dance! He’s too old to move fast.”
Cynthia crouched by the wall, brushing away from her face the scratchy
leaves of the dead hollyhocks. Excitement tingled through her; she felt
the red and yellow flames seizing her, burning out the heavy rebellion,
the choking weight. Miss Egert leaned back against the wall, her hands
spread so that her thin fingers were fire-edged.
“See the smoke curl up through those branches! Isn’t it lovely,
Cynthia?” She darted around the pile to push more leaves into the
flames.
Cynthia strained forward, hugging her arms to her body. Never had there
been such a fire! It burned through her awkwardness, her
self-consciousness. It ate into the thick, murky veils which hung always
between her and the things she struggled to find out. She took a long
breath, and the crisp scent of smoke from the dead leaves tingled down
through her body.
Miss Egert was at her side again. Cynthia looked up; the slight,
asymmetrical figure was like the apple-tree, still, yet dancing!
“Why don’t you paint it?” demanded Cynthia, abruptly, and then was
frightened as Miss Egert’s body stiffened, lost its suggestion of
motion.
“I can’t.” The woman dropped to the ground beside Cynthia, crumpling a
handful of leaves. “It’s too late.” She looked straight at the fire. “I
must be content to see it.” She blew the pieces of leaves from the palm
of her hand and smiled at Cynthia. “Perhaps some day you’ll paint it—or
write it.”
“I can’t paint.” Cynthia’s voice quivered. “I want to do something. I
can’t even see things except what you point out. And now—”
Miss Egert laid one hand over Cynthia’s clenched fingers. The girl
trembled at the cold touch.
“You must go on looking.” The glow, as the flames died lower, flushed
her face. “Cynthia, you’re just beginning. You mustn’t stop just because
you aren’t to come here any more. I don’t know whether you can say
things with your brush; but you must find them out. You mustn’t shut
your eyes again.”
“It’s hard alone.”
“That doesn’t matter.”
Cynthia’s fingers unclasped, and one hand closed desperately around Miss
Egert’s. Her heart fluttered in her temples, her throat, her breast. She
clung to the fingers, pulling herself slowly up from an inarticulate
abyss.
“Miss Egert,”—she stumbled into words,—“I can’t bear it, not coming
here! Nobody else cares except about sensible things. You do, beautiful,
wonderful things.”
“You’d have to find them for yourself, Cynthia.” Miss Egert’s fingers
moved under the girl’s grasp. Then she bent toward Cynthia, and kissed
her with soft, pale lips that trembled against the girl’s mouth.
“Cynthia, don’t let any one stop you! Keep searching!” She drew back,
poised for a moment in the shadow before she rose. Through Cynthia ran
the swift feet of white ecstasy. She was pledging herself to some
tremendous mystery, which trembled all about her.
“Come, Cynthia, we’re wasting our coals.”
Miss Egert held out her hands. Cynthia, laying hers in them, was drawn
to her feet. As she stood there, inarticulate, full of a strange,
excited, shouting hope, behind them the path crunched. Miss Egert
turned, and Cynthia shrank back.
Her mother stood in the path, making no response to Miss Egert’s “Good
evening, Mrs. Bates.”
The fire had burned too low to lift the shadow from the mother’s face.
Cynthia could see the hem of her skirt swaying where it dipped up in
front. Above that two rigid hands in gray cotton gloves; above that the
suggestion of a white, strained face.
Cynthia took a little step toward her.
“I came to get my sketches,” she implored her. Her throat was dry. What
if her mother began to say cruel things—the things she had already said
at home.
“I hope I haven’t kept Cynthia too late,” Miss Egert said. “We were
going to toast marshmallows. Won’t you have one, Mrs. Bates?” She pushed
the glowing leaf-ashes together. The little spurt of flame showed
Cynthia her mother’s eyes, hard, angry, resting an instant on Miss Egert
and then assailing her.
“Cynthia knows she should not be here. She is not permitted to run about
the streets alone at night.”
“Oh, I’m sorry.” Miss Egert made a deprecating little gesture. “But no
harm has come to her.”
“She has disobeyed me.”
At the tone of her mother’s voice Cynthia felt something within her
breast curl up like a leaf caught in flame.
“I’ll get the things I came for.” She started toward the house, running
past her mother. She must hurry, before her mother said anything to hurt
Miss Egert.
[Illustration: “CYNTHIA TOOK A LITTLE STEP TOWARD HER. ‘I CAME TO GET MY
SKETCHES,’ SHE IMPLORED HER”]
She stumbled on the door-step, and flung herself against the door. The
portfolio was across the room, on the little, old piano. The candle
beside it had guttered down over the cover. Cynthia pressed out the
wobbly flame, and, hugging the portfolio, ran back across the room. On
the threshold she turned for a last glimpse. The row of Botticelli
details over the bookcases were blurred into gray in the light of the
one remaining candle; the Indian rug had a wavering glow. Then she heard
Miss Egert just outside.
“I’m sorry Cynthia isn’t to come any more,” she was saying.
Cynthia stepped forward. The two women stood in the dim light, her
mother’s thickened, settled body stiff and hostile, Miss Egert’s slight
figure swaying toward her gently.
“Cynthia has a good deal to do,” her mother answered. “We can’t afford
to give her painting lessons, especially—” Cynthia moved down between
the women—“especially,” her mother continued, “as she doesn’t seem to
get much of anywhere. You’d think she’d have some pictures to show after
so many lessons.”
“Perhaps I’m not a good teacher. Of course she’s just beginning.”
“She’d better put her time on her studies.”
“I’ll miss her. We’ve had some pleasant times together.”
Cynthia held out her hand toward Miss Egert, with a fearful little
glance at her mother.
“Good-by, Miss Egert.”
Miss Egert’s cold fingers pressed it an instant.
“Good night, Cynthia,” she said slowly.
Then Cynthia followed her mother’s silent figure along the path; she
turned her head as they reached the sidewalk. Back in the garden winked
the red eye of the fire.
They waited under the arc light for the car, Cynthia stealing fleeting
glances at her mother’s averted face. On the car she drooped against the
window-edge, away from her mother’s heavy silence. She was frightened
now, a panicky child caught in disobedience. Once, as the car turned at
the corner below her father’s office, she spoke:
“Father will expect me—”
“He knows I went after you,” was her mother’s grim answer.
Cynthia followed her mother into the house. Her small brother was in the
sitting-room, reading. He looked up from his book with wide, knowing
eyes. Rebellious humiliation washed over Cynthia; setting her lips
against their quivering, she pulled off her sweater.
“Go on to bed, Robert,” called her mother from the entry, where she was
hanging her coat. “You’ve sat up too late as it is.”
He yawned, and dragged his feet with provoking slowness past Cynthia.
“Was she down there, Mama?” He stopped on the bottom step to grin at his
sister.
“Go on, Robert. Start your bath. Mother’ll be up in a minute.”
“Aw, it’s too late for a bath.” He leaned over the rail.
“It’s Saturday. I couldn’t get back sooner.”
Cynthia swung away from the round, grinning face. Her mother went past
her into the dining-room. Robert shuffled up-stairs; she heard the water
splashing into the tub.
Her mother was very angry with her. Presently she would come back, would
begin to speak. Cynthia shivered. The familiar room seemed full of
hostile, accusing silence, like that of her mother. If only she had come
straight home from the office, she would be sitting by the table in the
old Morris chair, reading, with her mother across from her sewing, or
glancing through the evening paper. She gazed about the room at the neat
scrolls of the brown wall-paper, at a picture above the couch, cows by a
stream. The dull, ordinary comfort of life there hung about her, a
reproaching shadow, within which she felt the heavy, silent discomfort
her transgression dragged after it. It would be much easier to go on
just as she was expected to do. Easier. The girl straightened her
drooping body. That things were hard didn’t matter. Miss Egert had
insisted upon that. She was forgetting the pledge she had given. The
humiliation slipped away, and a cold exaltation trembled through her, a
remote echo of the hope that had shouted within her back there in the
garden. Here it was difficult to know what she had promised, to what she
had pledged herself—something that the familiar, comfortable room had no
part in.
She glanced toward the dining-room, and her breath quickened. Between
the faded green portières stood her mother, watching her with hard,
bright eyes. Cynthia’s glance faltered; she looked desperately about the
room as if hurrying her thoughts to some shelter. Beside her on the
couch lay the portfolio. She took a little step toward it, stopping at
her mother’s voice.
“Well, Cynthia, have you anything to say?”
Cynthia lifted her eyes.
“Don’t you think I have trouble enough with your brothers? You, a grown
girl, defying me! I can’t understand it.”
“I went down for this.” Cynthia touched the black case.
“Put that down! I don’t want to see it!” The mother’s voice rose,
breaking down the terrifying silences. “You disobeyed me. I told you you
weren’t to go there again. And then I telephoned your father to ask you
to do an errand for me, and find you there—with that woman!”
“I’m not going again.” Cynthia twisted her hands together. “I had to go
a last time. She was a friend. I could not tell her I wasn’t coming—”
“A friend! A sentimental old maid, older than your mother! Is that a
friend for a young girl? What were you doing when I found you? Holding
hands! Is that the right thing for you? She’s turned your head. You
aren’t the same Cynthia, running off to her, complaining of your
mother.”
“Oh, no!” Cynthia flung out her hand. “We were just talking.” Her misery
confused her.
“Talking? About what?”
“About—” The recollection rushed through Cynthia—“about beauty.” She
winced, a flush sweeping up to the edge of her fair hair, at her
mother’s laugh.
“Beauty! You disobey your mother, hurt her, to talk about beauty at
night with an old maid!”
There was a hot beating in Cynthia’s throat; she drew back against the
couch.
“Pretending to be an artist,” her mother drove on, “to get young girls
who are foolish enough to listen to her sentimentalizing.”
“She was an artist,” pleaded Cynthia. “She gave it up to take care of
her father and mother. I told you all about that—”
“Talking about beauty doesn’t make artists.”
Cynthia stared at her mother. She had stepped near the table, and the
light through the green shade of the reading-lamp made queer pools of
color about her eyes, in the waves of her dark hair. She didn’t look
real. Cynthia threw one hand up against her lips. She was sucked down
and down in an eddy of despair. Her mother’s voice dragged her again to
the surface.
“We let you go there because you wanted to paint, and you maunder and
say things you’d be ashamed to have your mother hear. I’ve spent my life
working for you, planning for you, and you go running off—” Her voice
broke into a new note, a trembling, grieved tone. “I’ve always trusted
you, depended on you; now I can’t even trust you.”
“I won’t go there again. I had to explain.”
“I can’t believe you. You don’t care how you make me feel.”
Cynthia was whirled again down the sides of the eddy.
“I can’t believe you care anything for me, your own mother.”
Cynthia plucked at the braid on her cuff.
“I didn’t do it to make you sorry,” she whispered. “I—it was—” The eddy
closed about her, and with a little gasp she dropped down on the couch,
burying her head in the sharp angle of her elbows.
The mother took another step toward the girl; her hand hovered above the
bent head and then dropped.
“You know mother wants just what is best for you, don’t you? I can’t let
you drift away from us, your head full of silly notions.”
Cynthia’s shoulders jerked. From the head of the stairs came Robert’s
shout:
“Mama, tub’s full!”
“Yes; I’m coming.”
Cynthia looked up. She was not crying. About her eyes and nostrils
strained the white intensity of hunger.
“You don’t think—” She stopped, struggling with her habit of
inarticulateness. “There might be things—not silly—you might not see
what—”
“Cynthia!” The softness snapped out of the mother’s voice.
Cynthia stumbled up to her feet; she was as tall as her mother. For an
instant they faced each other, and then the mother turned away, her eyes
tear-brightened. Cynthia put out an awkward hand.
“Mother,” she said piteously, “I’d like to tell you—I’m sorry—”
“You’ll have to show me you are by what you do.” The woman started
wearily up the stairs. “Go to bed. It’s late.”
Cynthia waited until the bath-room door closed upon Robert’s splashings.
She climbed the stairs slowly, and shut herself into her room. She laid
the portfolio in the bottom drawer of her white bureau; then she stood
by her window. Outside, the big elm-tree, in fine, leafless dignity,
showed dimly against the sky, a few stars caught in the arch of its
branches.
A swift, tearing current of rebellion swept away her unhappiness, her
confused misery; they were bits of refuse in this new flood. She saw,
with a fierce, young finality that she was pledged to a conflict as well
as to a search. As she knelt by the window and pressed her cheek on the
cool glass, she felt the house about her, with its pressure of useful,
homely things, as a very prison. No more journeyings down to Miss
Egert’s for glimpses of escape. She must find her own ways. Keep
searching! At the phrase, excitement again glowed within her; she saw
the last red wink of the fire in the garden.
Transcriber’s Notes
Transcribed from the first publication in: The Century Magazine, vol.
95, Nov. 1917, pp. 105-114.
The original spelling and punctuation were preserved.
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