In the moment of her most frenzied attitude a golden patch of light from an opened door streamed out and over her.  In its radiance a woman’s wide-bosomed, wide-hipped silhouette, hand bent in a vizor over her eyes, leaned forward, and, rushing past her and down the plushy steps, the bareheaded figure of Mr. Charley Scully, a red and antiquated red wool indoor jacket flying to the wind, and a forelock of his shiny hair lifted.

“Marjie!”

She backed against the gate.

“Marj!  Marjie?”

“I—­No, no—­I—­I—­”

“Why, little one!  Marjie!  Marjie!”

“I—­No—­no—­”

But her inertia was of no moment, and very presently, Charles Scully’s strong right arm propelling her, she was in the warm, bright-lighted hallway, its door closing her in and the wide-bosomed, wide-hipped figure in spotted silk fumbling the throat fastenings of her jacket, and the stooped form of Charley Scully dragging off her thin rubber shoes.

“Whew! they’re soaking wet, ma.  Get her a pair of Till’s slippers or something.”

“Don’t jerk the child like that, son.  Pull ’em off easy.”

Through glazed eyes Marjorie Clark, balancing herself first on one foot, then the other, the spotted silk arm half sustaining her, could glimpse the scene of an adjoining room:  a fir-tree standing against a drawn window-blind half hung in tinsel fringe, and abandoned in the very act of being draped; a woman and a child stooping at its base.  Above a carved black-walnut table and from a mother-of-pearl frame, a small amateur photograph of Marjorie Clark smiled out at herself.

The figure in spotted silk dragged off the wet jacket and hurried with it toward the rear of the hallway, her left foot dragging slightly.

“Just a second, dearie-child, until I find dry things for you.  Son, stop fussing around the lamb until she gets rested.”

But on the first instant of the two of them standing alone there in the little hallway, Charley Scully turned swiftly to Marjorie Clark, catching up her small hand.  His eyes carried the iridescence of bronze.

“Marjie,” he said, “to—­why, to think you’d come!  Why—­why, little Marjie!”

“I—­oh, Charley-boy, I—­”

“What, little one?  What?”

“I—­I dun’no’.”

“What is it, hon?  Ain’t you as glad as I am?”

“I dun’no’, only I—­I—­I’m scared, Charley—­scared, I guess.”

“Why, you just never was so safe, Marjie, as now—­you just never was!”

She could not meet the eloquence of his eyes, but his smile was so near that the tightness at her throat seemed suddenly to thaw.

“Charley-boy,” she said.

But at the sound of returning footsteps she sprang backward, clasping her hands behind her.  A copper-haired woman with a copper-haired child in the curve of her arm moved through the lighted front room and toward them.  Her smile was upturned, with a dimple low in one cheek, like a star in the cradle of a crescent moon.  Charley Scully turned his vivid face toward her.