“You sit still!” said Margaret emphatically.  “This is not over yet.”

So Wesley remained in his seat.  The play opened and progressed very much as all high school plays have gone for the past fifty years.  But Elnora did not appear in any of the scenes.

Out in the warm summer night a sour, grim woman nursed an aching heart and tried to justify herself.  The effort irritated her intensely.  She felt that she could not afford the things that were being done.  The old fear of losing the land that she and Robert Comstock had purchased and started clearing was strong upon her.  She was thinking of him, how she needed him, when the orchestra music poured from the open windows near her.  Mrs. Comstock endured it as long as she could, and then slipped from the carriage and fled down the street.

She did not know how far she went or how long she stayed, but everything was still, save an occasional raised voice when she wandered back.  She stood looking at the building.  Slowly she entered the wide gates and followed up the walk.  Elnora had been coming here for almost four years.  When Mrs. Comstock reached the door she looked inside.  The wide hall was lighted with electricity, and the statuary and the decorations of the walls did not seem like pieces of foolishness.  The marble appeared pure, white, and the big pictures most interesting.  She walked the length of the hall and slowly read the titles of the statues and the names of the pupils who had donated them.  She speculated on where the piece Elnora’s class would buy could be placed to advantage.

Then she wondered if they were having a large enough audience to buy marble.  She liked it better than the bronze, but it looked as if it cost more.  How white the broad stairway was!  Elnora had been climbing those stairs for years and never told her they were marble.  Of course, she thought they were wood.  Probably the upper hall was even grander than this.  She went over to the fountain, took a drink, climbed to the first landing and looked around her, and then without thought to the second.  There she came opposite the wide-open doors and the entrance to the auditorium packed with people and a crowd standing outside.  When they noticed a tall woman with white face and hair and black dress, one by one they stepped a little aside, so that Mrs. Comstock could see the stage.  It was covered with curtains, and no one was doing anything.  Just as she turned to go a sound so faint that every one leaned forward and listened, drifted down the auditorium.  It was difficult to tell just what it was; after one instant half the audience looked toward the windows, for it seemed only a breath of wind rustling freshly opened leaves; merely a hint of stirring air.