is it, dear?” Her voice broke, husky with fright and pity. “Tell me–what is the matter? Won’t it come right tonight?”
With shaking hands she leaned over him, smoothing the shining hair. At the touch of her fingers he looked up, staring with pleading uncertainty into her quivering face before he shook his head.
“It–it don’t smile,” he complained querulously. His fingers groped lightly over the small face of clay. “I–I can’t make it smile–like the rest.”
Sudden terror contorted the thin features, a sheer ecstacy of terror as white-lipped as that which marred the face of the girl who bent above him.
“Maybe I’ve forgotten how she smiled!” he whispered fearfully. “Maybe I’ll never be able to–”
Dryad’s eyes flitted desperately around the room, along the shelves laden with those countless figures–all white and finely slender, all upturned of face. Again a little impotent gasp choked her; then, eyes filling hotly at that poignantly wistful smile which edged the lips of each, she stooped and patted reassuringly the trembling hands before she stepped a pace away from him.
“You’ve not forgotten, dear. Why, you mustn’t be frightened like that! We know, you and I, don’t we, that you never could forget? You’re just tired. Now, that’s better–that’s brave! And now–look! Isn’t this the way–isn’t this the way it ought to be?”
Face uptilted, bloodless lips falling apart in the faintest of pallid smiles, she swayed forward, both arms outstretched toward him. And as she stood the wide eyes and straight nose and delicately pointed chin of her colorless face took line for line the lines of all those, chalky white, against the wall.
For a moment John Anderson’s eyes clung to her–clung vacant with hopeless doubt; then they glowed again with dawning recollection. He, too, was smiling once more as his fingers fluttered in nervous haste above the lips of the clay face on the bench before him, and almost before the girl had stepped back beside him he had forgotten that she was there.
“Marie!” she heard him murmur. “Marie, why, you mustn’t be afraid! We’ll never forget–you and I–we never could forget!”
Even while she waited another instant those plastic earthen lips began to curl–they began to curve with hungry longing like all the rest. He was talking steadily now, mumbling broken fragments of sentences which it was hard to understand. Her hand hovered a moment longer over his bowed head; once at the door she paused and looked back at him.
“It’s only for a little while,” she promised unsteadily. “I–I have to go–but it’s only for a little while. I’ll be back soon–so soon! And you’ll be safe until I come!”
He gave no sign that he had heard, not even so much as a lifted glance. But as she drew the door shut behind her she heard him pick up the words, caressingly, after her.
“You’ll be safe, Marie,” he whispered. “It’ll be only for a little while, now. You’ll be safe till I come.” An ineffably peaceful smile flickered across his face. “We couldn’t forget–why, of course, we couldn’t forget–you and I!”
With the short black skirt lifted even higher above her ankles that she might make still more speed, Dryad turned into the dark path that twisted crookedly through the brush to the open clearing beside the brook and from there on to the black house on the hill.
She ran swiftly, madly, through the darkness, with the wild, panic-stricken, headlong abandon of a hunted thing, finding the narrow trail ahead of her by instinct alone. Only once she overran it, but that once a low hanging branch, face high, caught her full across the forehead and sent her crashing back in the underbrush. Just once she put one narrow foot in its loosely flapping shoe into the deep crevice between two rocks and gasped aloud with the pain of the fall that racked her knees. When she groped out and steadied herself erect she was talking–stammering half incoherent words that came bursting jerkily from her lips as she tore on.
“Help me … in time … God,” she panted, “Just this once … get to him … in time. Lord, forgive … own vanity. Oh, God, please in time!”
Small feet drumming the harder ground, she flashed up the last rise and across the yard to the door of that unlighted kitchen. Her hands felt for the latch and failed to find it; then she realized that it was already open–the door–but her knees, all the strength suddenly drained from them at the black quiet in that room, refused to carry her over the threshold. She rocked forward, reaching out with one hand for the frame to steady herself, and in that same instant the man who lay a huddled motionless heap across the table top, moved a little and began to speak aloud.
“They didn’t want me,” he muttered, and the words came with muffled thickness. “Not even for the strength of my shoulders.”
She took one faltering step forward–the girl who stood there swaying in the doorway–and stopped again. And the man lifted his head and laughed softly, a short, ugly rasping laugh.
“Not even for the work I could do,” he finished.
And then she understood. She tried to call out to him, and the words caught in her throat and choked her. She tried again and this time her voice rang clear through the room.
“Denny,” she cried, “Denny, I’ve come to you! Strike a light! I’m here, Denny, and–oh, I’m afraid–afraid of the dark!”
Before he could rise, almost before his big-shouldered body whirled in the chair toward her, her swift rush carried her across to him. She knelt at his knees, her thin arms clutching him with desperate strength. Denny Bolton felt her body shudder violently as he leaned over, dumb with bewilderment, and put his hands on her bowed head.
“Thank God,” he heard her whispering, “thank God–thank God!”
But far more swiftly than his half numbed brain could follow she was on her feet the next instant, tense and straight and lancelike in the gloom.
“Damn ’em,” she hissed. “Damn ’em–damn ’em–damn ’em!”
His fingers felt for and found a match and struck it. Her face was working convulsively, twisted with hate, both small fists lifted toward the huge house that crowned the opposite hill. It made him remember that first day when he had looked up, with the rabbit struggling in his arms, and found her standing there in the thicket before him, only now the fury that blazed in her eyes was not for him. There was a rough red welt across her forehead only half hidden by the tumbled hair that cascaded to her waist, torn loose from its scant fastenings by the whipping brush. And as he stood with the flame of the flickering match scorching his fingers, Denny Bolton remembered all the rest–he remembered the light that still burned unanswered in the window across the valley. He bowed his head.
“I–I forgot,” he faltered at last. “I did not know it was so late. I must have been–pretty tired.”
Slowly the girl’s clenched hands came away from her throat while she stared up into his face, brown and lean and very hard and bitter. The ashen terror upon her own cheeks disappeared with a greater, growing comprehension of all that lay behind that dully colorless statement. For just a moment her fingers hovered over the opening at the neck of her too small blouse and felt the thick white card that lay hidden within, before she lifted both arms to him in impulsive compassion, trying to smile in spite of the wearily childish droop at the corners of her lips.
“I know, Denny,” she quavered. “I–I understand.” Her arms slipped up around his neck. “Hold
