Up the front steps.  Into the house.  Not a sound.  She stood there a moment in the early morning half-light.  She peered into the dining room.  The table, with its breakfast debris, was as she had left it.  In the kitchen the coffee pot stood on the gas stove.  She was home.  She was safe.  She ran up the stairs, got out of her clothes and into crisp gingham morning things.  She flung open windows everywhere.  Down-stairs once more she plunged into an orgy of cleaning.  Dishes, table, stove, floor, rugs.  She washed, scoured, flapped, swabbed, polished.  By eight o’clock she had done the work that would ordinarily have taken until noon.  The house was shining, orderly, and redolent of soapsuds.

During all this time she had been listening, listening, with her sub-conscious ear.  Listening for something she had refused to name definitely in her mind, but listening, just the same; waiting.

And then, at eight o’clock, it came.  The rattle of a key in the lock.  The boom of the front door.  Firm footsteps.

He did not go to meet her, and she did not go to meet him.  They came together and were in each other’s arms.  She was weeping.

“Now, now, old girl.  What’s there to cry about?  Don’t, honey; don’t.  It’s all right.”

She raised her head then, to look at him.  How fresh, and rosy, and big he seemed, after that little sallow, yellow restaurant rat.

“How did you get here?  How did you happen—?”

“Jumped all the way from Ashland.  Couldn’t get a sleeper, so I sat up all night.  I had to come back and square things with you, Terry.  My mind just wasn’t on my work.  I kept thinking how I’d talked—­how I’d talked—­”

“Oh, Orville, don’t!  I can’t bear—­Have you had your breakfast?”

“Why, no.  The train was an hour late.  You know that Ashland train.”

But she was out of his arms and making for the kitchen.  “You go and clean up.  I’ll have hot biscuits and everything in fifteen minutes.  You poor boy.  No breakfast!”

She made good her promise.  It could not have been more than twenty minutes later when he was buttering his third feathery, golden brown biscuit.  But she had eaten nothing.  She watched him, and listened, and again her eyes were sombre, but for a different reason.  He broke open his egg.  His elbow came up just a fraction of an inch.  Then he remembered, and flushed like a schoolboy, and brought it down again, carefully.  And at that she gave a little tremulous cry, and rushed around the table to him.

“Oh, Orville!” She took the offending elbow in her two arms, and bent and kissed the rough coat sleeve.

“Why, Terry!  Don’t, honey.  Don’t!”

“Oh, Orville, listen—­”

“Yes.”

“Listen, Orville—­”

“I’m listening, Terry.”

“I’ve got something to tell you.  There’s something you’ve got to know.”

“Yes, I know it, Terry.  I knew you’d out with it, pretty soon, if I just waited.”