She did not answer; something seemed to hold her from speech.  One of her arms was twined about the rough, untrimmed pillar of the porch; her clasp tightened until she held it as if it were a bulwark against the human approach ready to take her from it at a word from her lips.

“I told you in my letter all I knew I couldn’t say now.  You know what you mean to me.  I’m going to make all I can out of what there is in me whether you help me or not.  But—­if I could do it for you—­”

Still she could not speak.  She clung to the pillar, her breath quickening.  He was silent until he could withstand no longer, then he spoke so urgently in her ear that he broke in upon that queer, choking reserve of hers which had kept her from yielding to him: 

“Roberta—­I must know—­I can’t bear it.”

She turned, then, and put out her hand.  He grasped it in both his own.

“What does that mean, dear?  May I—­may I have the rest of you?”

It was only a tiny nod she gave, this strange girl, Roberta, who had been so afraid of love, and was so afraid of it yet.  And as if he understood and appreciated her fear, he was very gentle with her.  His arms came about her as they might have come about a frightened child, and drew her away from the pillar with a tender insistence which all at once produced an extraordinary effect.  When she found that she was not to be seized with that devastating grasp of possession which she had dreaded, she was suddenly moved to desire it.  His humbleness touched and melted her—­his humbleness, in him who had been at first so arrogant—­and with the first exquisite rush of response she was taken out of herself.  She gave herself to his embrace as one who welcomes it, and let him have his way—­all his way—­a way in which he quite forgot to be gentle at all.

When this had happened, Roberta remembered, entirely too late, that it was this which, whatever else she gave him, she had meant to refuse him—­at least until to-morrow.  Because to-day was undeniably the twenty-fourth of June—­Midsummer’s Day!

CHAPTER XXIV

THE PILLARS OF HOME

“Listen, grandfather—­they’re playing!  We’ll catch them at it.  Here’s an open window.”

Matthew Kendrick followed his grandson across the wide porch to a French window opening into the living-room of the Gray home, at the opposite end from that where stood the piano, and from which the strains of ’cello and harp were proceeding.  The two advanced cautiously to take up their position just within that far window, gazing down the room at the pair at the other end.

Roberta, in hot-weather white, with a bunch of blue corn-flowers thrust into her girdle, sat with her ’cello at her knee, her dark head bent as she played.  Ruth, a gay little figure in pink, was fingering her harp, and the poignantly rich harmonies of Saint-Saeens’ Mon coeur s’ouvre a ta voix were filling the room.  Upon the great piano stood an enormous bowl of summer bloom; the air was fragrant with the breath of it.  The room was as cool and fresh with its summer draperies and shaded windows as if it were not fervid July weather outside.