She went upstairs.  The harsh light of the summer noon did not penetrate the old Monroe house.  Martie’s room was full of greenish light; there was an opaque streak across the old mirror where she found her white, tired face.

She flung herself across the bed.  Her heart was still beating high, and her lips felt dry and hot.  She could neither rest nor think, but she lay still for a long while.

Chief among her confused emotions was relief.  He had come, he had frightened and disturbed her.  Now he was gone again.  She would presently go down to mash Teddy’s baked potato, and serve watery canned pears from the pressed glass bowl.  She would dress in white, and go driving with Cliff and Teddy and Ruth in the late afternoon.  Life would resume its normal placidity.

A week from to-day Rose and Sally would give her the announcement party.  Martie resolutely forced her thoughts to the hour of John’s arrival:  of what had she been thinking then?  Of her wedding gown of blue taffeta, and the blue straw hat wreathed with roses.  She must go down to the city, perhaps, for the hat—?

But the city brought John again to her mind, and for a few delicious minutes she let herself remember his voice, his burning words, his deep, meaning look.

“Well, it’s wonderful—­to have a man care that way!” she said, forcing herself to get up, and set about dressing.  “It’s something to have had, but it’s over!”

CHAPTER VI

Over, however, the episode was not, and after a few days Martie realized with a sort of shame that she did not wish it to be over.  She could not keep her memory away from the enchanted hours when John’s presence had lent a glory to the dark old house and the prosaic village.  She said with a pang:  “It was only yesterday—­it was only two—­only three—­days ago, that he was here, that all the warmth and delight of it was mine!”

The burning lightness and dryness seemed still to possess her:  she was hardly conscious of the days she was living, for the poignancy and power of the remembered days.  The blue taffeta dress had lost its charm, everything had grown strangely dull and poor.

She passed the lumber-yard with a quickened heart; she climbed the hill alone, and leaned on the fence where they had leaned, and let the full, splendid recollection sweep across her.  She knelt in church and prayed that there would be a letter from Dean Silver, saying that Adele was dead—­

A little cottage on a river bank in Connecticut became her Heaven.  She gave it an old flag-stone walk, she sprinkled the green new grass of an Eastern spring with daisies.  She dreamed of a simple room, where breezes and sunshine came by day, and the cool moon by night, and where she and John laughed over their bread and cheese.

So far it was more joy than pain.  But there swiftly came a time when pain alone remained.  Life became almost intolerable.