Seed on the Wind

XI

Lora, lying on the couch in precisely the same position as when Steve had entered a brief fifteen minutes earlier, heard faintly through the closed door the quick nervous rhythm of Janet’s footsteps descending the stairs. Then her ears, despoiled of that diversion, caught at other sounds: other tenants’ voices that came from the court through the open window in the bedroom, the pattering of an animal’s feet — she had never known whether it was a cat or a small dog — on the floor above which topped her ceiling, the rumble of a distant elevated train, the confused medley from the street. For a while nothing was alive but her ears; she had no thoughts or feelings, not even the feeling of herself as a phenomenon; she was neither conscious nor unconscious.

Then she stirred and turned over on her side, and the sounds all at once ceased to exist; her brain awoke. “How do you do,” she said aloud, “you’ve done it this time, haven’t you, darling.” A thought darted at her: how about Steve’s overcoat and two suits? He wore good clothes; the tailor at the corner could probably get a good price for them. Or what about his false information to the draft board? Weren’t rewards offered for things like that? Momentarily the idea diverted her, and she smiled into space; then, frowning, she turned to serious considerations. She might get a loan from Janet Poole, or Mrs. Crosby at the tea-room, or even Mr. Pitkin. She pictured herself making the request, and her frown deepened; she would almost rather steal than borrow; however, it was just as well to have the possibilities in mind in case of desperate emergency. Surely there were other means.

Again she spoke aloud, more for the companionship of her own voice than anything else. “Money is the root of all evil,” she said clearly and distinctly. Ha, it hasn’t any roots, she thought, it’s like that plant in the picture in geography in school which went crawling around through trees without any roots of its own. It was in school too that she had written the sentence, money is the root of all evil, in a clear round hand which, according to the teacher, however legible she might painfully make it, never did sufficiently slant.

I still write that way, she thought, only I almost never write.

The chief difference between her school days and the present, she reflected, was that then other people had always been on hand to point out her mistakes, whereas now she had to find them out for herself. Childhood, so it seemed, had been nothing but an endless process of fresh discoveries of the remarkable and often bewildering boundaries of the permissible. The hardest part of it had been the unbelievable confusion: a thing perfectly all right in one place was utterly wrong in another; actions strictly prohibited in school were overlooked, even encouraged, at home. It changed with people, too; one teacher would smile indulgently at something which another severely reprimanded. And as for time, that was the most confusing of all; you never knew today whether yesterday’s rules still held, you simply had to try it out and see; whereas on Tuesday Mother snatched the scissors out of your hand the minute you picked them up, on Wednesday she sat and placidly read a book while you clipped all the arms and legs off your paper dolls. In the end you felt despairingly that the jungle of complications was much too vast and intricate for any exploration you might attempt; you gave up all idea of rules and fastened a wary eye on each situation as it presented itself. That simplified the problem enormously; if Mother’s face looked like this, for instance, you let the scissors alone; if like that, you used them for any reasonable purpose that occurred to you. Obviously, the point was Mother’s face, not the scissors at all.

You were aware though that this was true only relatively; the purpose must be reasonable; you could not cut the borders off of window curtains, or leaves out of books, anywhere at any time observed of anyone. You could not use pee as an intransitive verb, meaning go-go, except slyly with other children, who did not count anyway, being in the same precarious and anomalous situation as yourself; and since go-go was at an early age discarded as infantile, you were left without any verb at all for that particular function and were driven to the expedient of expressing the need for its performance by a series of facial and bodily contortions which seemed to you grotesque and shameful, so that you always felt yourself blushing; though your elders appeared to find them vastly amusing, since invariably they laughed and giggled when they saw you. One result of this was that now and then your underthings got wet; on those occasions the only desire left to you was that the crust of the earth should open under your feet and swallow you into the oblivion of hell.

Certain admonitions from certain people were as inevitable as Mother’s goodnight kiss or oatmeal at breakfast. From Miss Wright, “Take your pencil out of your mouth”; from Mother, “Don’t annoy your father, dear”; from Sam who tended the furnace, “Get on out of here now”; from Father, “Pull your skirt down.”

The last was the best remembered of all; she would never forget it; it made her uncomfortable and resentful even now to recall her father’s “Pull your skirt down.” When had she heard it first? No telling, that was lost somewhere back in the origins of things; nor could she remember specifically its farewell performance, after she had graduated into high school and begun to have beaux, had become a young lady in fact; but in between those two forgotten occasions, the first and the last, it had persisted throughout, with or without reason.

Come to think of it, that was her father, “Pull your skirt down.” That was him. Most other memories of him, from childhood and early youth, were fleshless and bloodless, mere punctuations of time, with no significance beyond the chronological. Her first remembered reaction to that command, as a plump freckled youngster of five or six, had been simple and instant obedience. She had pulled her skirt down, though there had been very little to pull. By the time it had undergone a dozen repetitions she had, unconsciously of course, added it to the category of rules headed: Father Specialties, No Exceptions. It first became annoying on account of its indiscriminate use, a purely logical indignation against the requirement that something be pulled down which was already down as far as it would pull. The day came when the command was uttered and her hand did not move; after a brief interval it was repeated, in a tone that surprised and shocked her into a sudden violent tug.

“If you don’t care about decency, I do,” said her father.

She was at that time twelve or thirteen. The plumpness was all gone, and the freckles had disappeared; her hair had already begun to assume the dark rich tone which later became her chief attraction. He, her father, standing near the door putting on his overcoat, looked as to her he had always looked, large, well-built, handsome, not so old as other girls’ fathers but infinitely more terrifying. She liked to watch his mouth when he talked or laughed; his red lips and gums and white teeth made fascinating combinations. At one time, when she was almost too young to remember, he had worn a short moustache, but it had been gone now for some years; of mornings in the bathroom she was often permitted, when necessity required it, to wash her hands and face at the tub faucet while he shaved at the bowl, and on these occasions she consumed a lot of precious time with her surreptitious delighted glances at his distortions and grimaces in the mirror, with the thick creamy lather making his white teeth seem by comparison a sickly yellow, and his skin, as the razor-strokes uncovered it, a fiery pink.

“Come come, you’ll be late for school,” he would say. “I’m not making faces to amuse you.”

There were at that time many things about many people which she did not begin to understand, but she understood her father and mother least of all. Why did it make him angry when her mother said, “Don’t annoy your father, dear,” and why in face of that invariable result did her mother keep on saying it? Why was he always in such a hurry when he told Mother goodbye in the morning, though often, on leaving the house, he would linger in the front yard, leisurely smelling the flowers, pruning with his pocketknife a shrub or rosebush here and there? Why did her mother always cry when he called her “my pale love” in that funny tone? The definitions of “pale” and “love” in the dictionary seemed to offer no basis for tears. Why did he dislike boys so much, and chase them off, even the nicest ones when they were doing no harm? Above all, why did he kick the cat? Four times he did that: the little black and white cat, when Lora was five or six; two years later the same cat, this time blinding it and injuring its jaw so that it had to be killed; somewhat later Brownie, no harm done; and the last time when Lora was in her early teens, a big male Maltese which afterwards limped around for a month or so and then suddenly disappeared.

In addition to these more or less frequently recurring enigmas and innumerable others like them, an isolated and unique one now and again offered itself. For a late example, why did he all at once stop kissing her, his daughter, goodnight? He made no announcement and offered no explanation; he simply stopped. This was at about the time when she was becoming for other males objectively kissable: sixteen, in her second year at high school, her hair up. For that matter she had always been pleasing to look at, even during her freckle period; a lovely child, everyone called her, then a lovely enchanting girl, which indeed she was, with her amber-grey rather solemn eyes, smooth fair skin, mouth a little too large and, closed, a little too straight, but, in articulation or smiling, flexible and sympathetic and capable of charming curves and twists. What startled was her hair; at first sight the contrast seemed freakish, put on a bit; but the harmony was there and soon made itself felt. She lost her girlish angularity earlier than the rule; at sixteen the final fullnesses were already shaping her calves and arms and shoulders, and her breasts could no longer be called hints or promises nor her chest boyish — obviously something was preparing there beyond a meager and superfluous decoration, plain to see when she drew her shoulders back to stretch and the silk of her blouse tried in vain to make a level plane from her throat to her middle.

She was minded, as a matter of research, to ask other girls in her class if their fathers still kissed them goodnight, but never got around to it.

She felt indeed that there was something peculiar about her father and she didn’t want to discuss him with anyone; least of all with her mother. He was not untouchable exactly, nor was he terrifying to her anymore; certainly she was not consciously afraid of him; and yet fear was in it somehow, though it was not fear of his authority or of anything he was likely to say or do to her. The feeling was with her constantly in his presence, and made her a little uncomfortable; she was always self-conscious with him, she couldn’t help it. Sometimes she was reminded, without knowing why, of an experience some years before, at the circus, when she had seen a man enter a cage and stand there smiling, surrounded by a dozen snarling and crouching tigers; it was the first time she had seen such a thing, and she had been rigid with fear, forgetting to breathe so long that finally she had to gasp for it. Why her feeling regarding her father should remind her of that was inexplicable; nothing resembling a threatening tiger, let alone a dozen, was discernible; certainly her poor mother was no tiger. Her poor mother! Whose tears became more frequent with each passing year, and who, with her comely daughter almost grown, had apparently only one piece of advice left for her, often repeated: “Never give your heart to a man, my child, never.” Weeping, she would add, “You’re too young to understand, but you’re not too young to be told.” To Lora that sounded like poppycock; her poor mother was unhappy, that was plain, and it was equally plain that her father was too. That was a pity, she thought; and that was as far as she got.

But when young men began to call at the Winter home it was not her mother, but her father, who acted — as it was described in Lora’s circle — goofy. He would sit in the living room where they sat, though he ordinarily read in the dining room because he thought the light was better. If he spent the evening downtown at a lodge meeting and on returning home found a young man — no matter who, for there were many — on the premises, Lora could see that he was furious, though he said nothing. He would certainly have kicked the cat, she thought, if there had been one. The difficulty was that he said nothing. If Lora asked whether she was to be permitted to have friends he would reply, certainly, of course, why not; and then proceeded to make all their lives miserable if a friend appeared. It was an attitude invulnerable because unexpressed; there was no word or action that permitted of challenge or even discussion; had Lora requested to be left alone in the living room when she had callers he would immediately have acquiesced and then have conveyed on every occasion, by word and tone and gesture too subtle to be seized on, that the arrangement was an outrage. He no longer told her to pull her skirt down or made observations regarding his devotion to decency; in much more concealed and effective ways did he gradually induce a highly charged atmosphere which in time brought upon his wife a condition of chronic pallid tight-lipped silence and began to make a noticeable impression even upon Lora’s young and hardy nerves. On one occasion at the end of her eighteenth year, returning in mid-evening from an automobile ride with Speedy Clarke, who was halfback on the high school team, being accompanied to the porch by her escort in spite of an obvious reluctance which had descended upon him when they turned into the Winter driveway, they found the scene suddenly flooded with light from the bulb on the porch ceiling; and almost instantly the front door opened and Mr. Winter emerged. “Good evening,” he said, looking at Speedy Clarke, and that burly athlete blushed, stammered incoherently, and fled. On the spur of the moment, standing there on the porch, Lora said:

“Why do you dislike him, Father?”

Mr. Winter seemed astonished. He didn’t dislike him, he said; quite the contrary, he was obviously a nice young fellow.

“Then why do you look at him like that?”

“I wasn’t aware that I looked at him like anything in particular.” He was frowning. “It’s customary, I believe, to look at people when you greet them.”

Lora took a sudden resolution. “Look here,” she said, “if I do anything you disapprove of why don’t you say so? You act as if you didn’t want me to have any friends at all.” As she spoke she became aware that the front door had not been entirely closed, and that from within her mother had approached and now stood with her face wedged into the narrow opening, silently regarding them on the porch, but she went on breathlessly, “You must know how you look at them, they all hate to come here. If you don’t want me to have anybody come to see me why don’t you tell me so?”

Her father’s expression did not change; he continued to frown. He spoke quietly. “This is somewhat unusual, isn’t it, reproaching your father like this? Especially since it is entirely uncalled for. To answer your question: even if I wanted no one to come to see you I see no reason why I should tell you so; you are old enough to have a right to your own whims and opinions. Anyway I don’t at all object to your having friends; not at all; nothing could be more natural. As to the way I look at them, I don’t know what you mean; I look as I look, that’s all.”

“They’re all afraid of you, you know they are.”

“I hardly think it is your place to tell me what I know.”

But she kept to the main issue, refusing to be sidetracked. She insisted, “All I want is, tell me what to do. If I’m to see people only at other places, all right, that’s all right. Pretty soon they’ll refuse to come here anyway.”

“I repeat, I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

And all at once she hated him, despised his monstrous and meaningless pretense, despised it all the more for her bewildered inability to understand it. He must be, no doubt of it, he must be, in some obscure and limited manner, insane; yes, to put it plainly, he was crazy. She was frightened and profoundly repelled, and at the same time she wanted to laugh and dismiss it with a shrug of the shoulders; it was all so trivial, so absurdly childish, getting — all three of them — mixed up in these idiotic twistings and turnings about something which was of no real importance. What did she care whether Speedy Clarke, or anyone else, was permitted to come on that porch? It was fit only to be laughed at, she saying to her father, “You quit making faces at my friends,” and he replying, “I’m not making faces,” like two babies in the kindergarten and not very intelligent ones at that. Her father at least was old enough to know better.

Nevertheless she hated him, and for the first time the hatred was in her voice as she flung at him:

“All right, if you won’t say what you think, but you might as well know right now you’re not going to do to me what you’ve done to Mother. I won’t stand for it.”

There was an immediate reply, but it came in a thin tense voice from the crack in the door:

“Leave me out of it, child, just leave me out of it. You go right on, I’ll take care of myself.”

She’s afraid of her life, Lora thought, she’s scared stiff. Her father turned to observe disdainfully towards the crack, “Oh, you’re there, are you,” but the face had disappeared. Then he turned back to Lora, and she saw that his face had suddenly gone red and his hands were trembling.

“What have I done to your mother?” he demanded.

Lora did not answer. She knew what it meant when he looked like that, though she had seen it but seldom; and without stopping for consideration, either of valor or of policy, she fled. She darted past him toward the door which still stood a little open, burst through it, and was halfway up the stairs on the way to her room before he could have had time to move. Inside her room, she closed the door and locked it; then deciding that to be an unnecessarily theatrical gesture, she turned the key back again, but left the door closed. She observed that she was panting much more than was justified by a bound up the stairs on her strong youthful legs.

Sitting at her dressing-table and starting to do her hair, she was conscious of neither anger nor hatred; of no emotion whatever in fact except a feeling of emptiness and sour dissatisfaction. She wished vaguely that she had stayed for the explosion, something positive and definite at least might have come of it; but she knew it was well that she hadn’t; he might have kicked her; not to be funny about it, he might really have done something terrible. She heard her mother’s light hesitating footsteps on the stairs, and some ten minutes later her father’s heavier confident ones; neither approached her door; she heard each time the door of their room open and close. This night she was struck with fresh and increased horror on consideration of a fact which had seemed to her incongruous and grotesque for as long as she could remember: the fact that her father and mother slept in the same bed. However incredible — in view of their waking relations — it was unquestionably so; in childhood she had on various occasions actually seen it; and to this day circumstantial evidence proved that the strange practice persisted, unless she was to suppose that one of them slept on a chair. Maybe they took turns. Maybe Father perched on the footboard. She giggled to herself, her nerves still on edge a little, opened the windows, turned out the lights, and bounced into bed.

That was all. Nothing happened. In June she finished high school, and having decided against college and being impelled toward no particular vocation, found herself without any functional activity save the desultory continuation of her piano lessons. There was nothing for her to do at home; her mother always said that there was scarcely enough to keep herself and the maid occupied. Mr. Winter, holding that automobiles were dangerous, refused to buy one, though he could easily have afforded it, since the business of his hardware store, wholesale and retail, continually prospered — and though Lora had long since learned to drive the cars of her friends. She was not at all bored; she played golf and tennis, danced, rode horseback now and then at the home of a friend a few miles out of town, took her piano lessons, went to the movies once a week, played bridge occasionally, and as opportunity offered permitted kisses to any one of a dozen young men — boys rather — in the circle of her orbit.

The kisses she found anywhere from distasteful to keenly pleasurable, according to the circumstances. There was not much savour in them, she thought; it surprised her and made her uncomfortable to observe the condition to which certain of her best friends could be reduced by an indulgence which to herself was no more than one item of the diverting routine of friendly intercourse with people she liked. She was of course aware, in a general sort of way, that in this department of social activity one thing had been known to lead to another and that carried to extremities it was even possible that disaster might ensue. She had experienced the assault of the hand on the knee, under the skirt even, the touch of the center lip, the clumsy trembling fingers seeking the neck-fastening — all the traditional half-daring half-pathetic little gestures of the male king groping doggedly for his destiny. They neither repelled her nor excited her nor amused her; she was as indifferent as it is possible to be in a situation which calls for action; with admirable lack of concern she succeeded in conveying the information that this laboratory was closed to experiment. Once, dared by Cecelia Harper, she did slap the face of an enterprising youth with such force that his head banged against a sharp edge of the car window and brought blood — which she compassionately wiped away with her handkerchief and then permitted him to keep the bit of linen and lace as a souvenir. He placed it, red with his blood, in the breast pocket of his vest, declaring that it should repose there forever.

It was this same Cecelia Harper who was eventually responsible, indirectly, for her final passage at arms with her father. It came in early autumn, just two months before her nineteenth birthday. For a week or more Lora’s head buzzed with her friend’s proposal; it was this proposal, in fact, which first made her sharply aware that life did present concrete problems which called for practical solutions, and that those solutions could not be arrived at without deliberate and intricate calculation. So at least it seemed to her; and for more than a week her head was filled with all the implications and counter-implications of Cecelia’s proposal, its probabilities and perils and advantages, until her brain swam and it became evident that it was impossible to reach any sensible conclusion whatever. That very evening she discovered to her astonishment that she had in fact decided the matter definitely and purposefully; what made her aware of it was this, that she found herself standing, straight and determined, by the long table in the living room, directly facing her father who sat with a cigar and a book, and saying to him:

“She’s going in two weeks, October twentieth. That’s two weeks from tomorrow. Of course in addition to my living expenses I’d have to have enough to pay for my lessons, but there are hundreds of teachers there, any of them better than I could get here, Mr. Vickers says so himself.”

She was thinking to herself, good lord I’m off, I’m actually doing it. Her father said nothing, he merely sat and looked at her as she rattled on, explaining that an old friend of Cecelia’s mother who lived there would see that they were properly settled in a proper neighborhood, a small furnished apartment probably, since that way two could live almost as cheaply as one. It sounded odd, even questionable, she admitted, but really it wasn’t at all; in Chicago such an arrangement was perfectly natural; why, Clem Baxter said there were at least a hundred thousand young women in Chicago, students and business women, living just that way. Still her father did not seem ready to speak, so she continued at random, in spite of her determination confused by his silence, speaking not much to the point, of Cecelia’s plans and ambitions, of her own delight at this opportunity to make something of herself, of the innumerable cultural advantages offered by a great center of commerce and the arts such as Chicago.

Finally her father opened his lips; but all he said was, in a dry restrained tone:

“So you want to go.”

Lora nodded.

“You want to leave your father and mother.”

Now listen to that, she thought, isn’t that awful. She said, “I’d have to leave someday I suppose.”

“Yes. Of course. You want to leave now.”

“It’s not leaving exactly — not as if I were going to be married for instance. Goodness, it’s only five hours away — I can come for visits—”

She was interrupted. Her father suddenly leaned forward in his chair and said sharply:

“You’re lying to me.”

“Lying! Why... what—”

“Why did you mention marriage?”

“I don’t know — I just happened—”

“Oh, you just happened. Just a slip of the tongue. That’s quite likely. Look, you know, you think I haven’t noticed anything? The way you’ve been going, you’re never at home anymore, there’s no use going into details, but I’ve had my eyes open. I suppose I’m scaring you away by looking at you; why don’t you tell me that? I have honestly and conscientiously tried to be the best kind of a father to you. The best I know how. So it’s not as if you were going to be married — it isn’t, eh? Why did you say that? I want to know why you said that.”

“I don’t know — I just said it—”

She stopped. She saw that her father’s mouth was shut tight, and a tiny pink spot had appeared in the middle of each cheek. He looked at his cigar and saw that it had gone out and suddenly hurled it across the room toward the fireplace.

“You can’t go,” he said in a new voice.

I’ve handled this stupidly, Lora thought, surely it could have been done without getting him like this. Her own lips tightened as his had done.

“Why not?” she demanded.

“Because I say so. You can’t go.”

“What if I go anyway?”

The pink spots were larger, and his hand in his lap was trembling; the fingers of the other were pressed around the arm of his chair. Then suddenly, as if by magic, the pink spots disappeared, leaving his face and brow quite pale; Lora stared at the phenomenon, fascinated; she had never seen it happen before.

“You wouldn’t do that,” he said; it was a plea. “You know you wouldn’t do that. Listen, Lora, there are lots of things you don’t understand. The business, for instance, it hasn’t been doing so well. You have no idea how the mail-order houses are cutting into us. That’s just one difficulty; it’s a long story. Have you figured up how much this plan of yours would cost? The lessons themselves would be a big expense, nothing like Vickers; those fellows up there pile it on; they have to. Rents are way up in the clouds — everything you do, every time you turn around; you’ve never been in a big city and I have. I don’t say I couldn’t find the money, but it would be difficult, it would be a big drain. At any rate, just at present — later, perhaps, say a year or two from now, it might be quite different. That’s the truth of the matter.”

Lora was speechless. She knew nothing of all this save that it was totally unexpected. But she had a feeling about it, and she was now so aroused that nothing but feelings counted; accordingly she looked straight at her father’s shockingly pale face, and said clearly and deliberately:

“I don’t believe that. Not a word of it.”

That brought the pink spots back! He was out of his chair on the instant, towering above her, glaring down at her, his fists upraised, trembling from head to foot. He was speaking too, shouting rather, but Lora did not get the words. Ha, she was thinking, now I’ll find out what would have happened if I’d held my ground that time on the porch. She didn’t budge; and the result was that she soon found herself alone on the field; for abruptly her father turned, his fists still upraised, his face purple, shaking as if in an ague, and rushed from the room. From the house also; for Lora heard the front door open and bang to, and even the pounding of his footsteps on the porch.

Not till those sounds had gone did she realize how rigid she was, how she had fastened herself to that spot, head up, hands clenched at her sides. She let the muscles go, hunched her shoulders up and released them again, and turned and made her way upstairs to her mother’s room. Her mother had heard it all, it appeared, from the stairs, through the open hall door. She was already weeping, and as Lora patted her arm and told her not to worry the flow increased. She implored Lora not to go, declaring that it would be unbearable to be left alone with him; she couldn’t stand it. To avoid being betrayed into a promise Lora made her escape as soon as she could, to her own room, where she threw herself on the bed to get her mind straight.

Of course, she reflected, there was no use tearing her hair out. All girls had trouble with their fathers, good lord she knew that well enough — look at Bess Updegraff for instance, who had to be home at ten o’clock absolutely, no exceptions if the house burned down. Still Bess knew what to expect at least, whereas she, Lora, never knew anything; her father was just plain crazy and besides he was a damn liar. That wasn’t true about the business. How did she know? No matter, it wasn’t true. And her mother was a pill, no good to herself or anyone else. Afraid to ask him to pass the butter at the table. It was painful and shameful, enough to give you the creeps. As for herself, she would show him. She felt a lump as big as a potato at the entrance of her throat as she made the resolution that she would show him. She would go. She would live somehow — not with Cecelia probably, for Cece would have plenty of money, but she would live. There were just two things she could do, play the piano and drive a car; neither seemed to offer great possibilities, but there were plenty of girls as stupid as her who weren’t starving.

A long while later — she thought it must have been hours, but the clock on her dressing-table said only eleven — she undressed and went to bed. Her father had not returned. She determined to work out her plans to the last detail; she would not close her eyes until everything was arranged and settled in her mind; but as it happened her head had rested on the pillow scarcely long enough to hollow out its nest so that the tip of her nose touched the smooth white muslin, before she was sound asleep.

In the morning she awoke to the sound of her name. She heard it twice before she got her eyes open; then, blinking, she saw the early October sun slanting through the open window, the curtains shivering in the chill breeze; and, all at once, became aware that her father was standing at the foot of her bed with his eyes on her. “Hello,” she said, sleepily astonished, for she could not remember when he had last thus entered her room, it had been so long ago. There was something distinctly strange about his face, she thought confusedly, but decided that impression was caused by the window and sunlight at his back which made it impossible for her to see clearly. He did look peculiar, though. He uttered a few brief sentences, in a dry quiet tone, and then turned and abruptly departed without waiting for a reply.

She sat up in bed and stared in amazement at the door through which he had disappeared, now fully awake. Good lord, had she dreamed it? No; he really had been there, and he really had said that having carefully considered the project of which she had spoken the evening before he had come to the conclusion that it was desirable and wise, and that she could count on his support, financial of course, and moral if need be.

“See that, he’s crazy any way you look at it,” said Lora to the sunbeam, shaking her hair back out of her eyes. She wished the light had been the other way so she could have seen his face.