Natalie went to bed and to sleep, but scarcely had the last gleam faded from the western sky when she awoke.  A sudden terror seized her.  The pillow beneath her cheek was wet.  Upon her heart a great weight pressed down and down.  For a moment she rebelled.  She had gone to sleep in the lap of her happiest day.  How could she wake to grief?  A single word tapped at her brain:  Folly, Folly.  And then she knew—­she knew the wound her happy day had left; and wide-eyed, fighting for breath, her arms outstretched, she felt the slow birth of the pain that lives and lives and grows with life.

Natalie cried easily for happiness, and so the tears that she could spare to grief were few.  Not for nothing had she been born to the note of joy.  Through all her life, so troubled, so thinly spread with pleasures, she had clung to her inheritance.  Often had her mind questioned her heart:  “What is there in this empty day?  Why do you laugh?  Why do you sing?” And ever her heart had answered, “I laugh and sing because, if not to-day, then to-morrow, the full day cometh.”

But to-night her inheritance seemed a little and a cruel thing.  Wide-eyed she prayed for the tears that would not come.  Dry were her eyes, dry was her throat, and dry the pressing weight upon her heart.  Hours passed, and then she put forth her strength.  She slipped from the bed and walked with groping hands toward the open window.  In the semi-darkness she moved like a tall, pale light.  Down her back and across her bosom her hair fell like a caressing shadow.  Her white feet made no sound.

She reached the window and knelt, her arms folded upon the low sill.  She tossed the hair from before her face and looked out upon the still night.  How far were the stars to-night—­as cold and far as on that night of long ago when she had stood on the top of the highest hill and called to the desert for Lew!

She stayed at the window for a long time, and found meager comfort at last in the thought that Lewis could not have guessed.  How could he have guessed what she herself had not known?  She arose and went back to bed.  Then she lay thinking and planning a course that should keep not only Lewis but also Mrs. Leighton and mammy blind to the wound she bore.  And while she was in the midst of planning, sleep came and made good its ancient right to lock hands with tired youth.

Leighton was crestfallen to see in what high spirits Lew had come back from his first day with Natalie.  He lost faith at once in H lne’s cure.  Then, as they went to bed, he clutched at a straw.

“Lew,” he asked, “did you tell your pal everything?”

“Everything I could think of in the time,” said Lewis, smiling.  “One day isn’t much when you’ve got half of two lives to go over.  Of course there were things we forgot.  We’ll have them to tell to-morrow.”

“Was Folly one of the things you forgot?”

“No,” answered Lewis and paused, a puzzled look on his brow.  He was wondering why he had remembered Folly.  To-night she seemed very far away.  Then he threw back his head and looked at his father.  “Why did you ask that?”