Yes, it was the car, approaching.  The two glaring headlights swept the white road, stopped, and went out.  For an instant the dark mass stood motionless in the starlight.  Then something moved, a man’s tall figure came up the path.

“Is that you, Marise?” asked Neale’s voice.

She had not breath to speak, but all of her being cried out silently to him the question which had had all the day such a desperate meaning for her, “Is that you, Neale?”

PART IV

CHAPTER XXIV

NEALE’S RETURN

July 22.  Evening.

He stooped to kiss her and sank down beside her where she sat cowering in the dark.  Although she could not see his face clearly Marise knew from his manner that he was very tired, from the way he sat down, taking off his cap, and his attitude as he leaned his head back against the pillar.  She knew this without thinking about it, mechanically, with the automatic certainty of a long-since acquired knowledge of him.  And when he spoke, although his voice was quiet and level, she felt a great fatigue in his accent.

But he spoke with his usual natural intonation, which he evidently tried to make cheerful.  “I’m awfully glad you’re still up, dear.  I was afraid you’d be too tired, with the funeral coming tomorrow.  But I couldn’t get here any sooner.  I’ve been clear over the mountain today.  And I’ve done a pretty good stroke of business that I’m in a hurry to tell you about.  You remember, don’t you, how the Powers lost the title to their big woodlot?  I don’t know if you happen to remember all the details, how a lawyer named Lowder . . .”

“I remember,” said Marise, speaking for the first time, “all about it.”

“Well,” went on Neale, wearily but steadily, “up in Nova Scotia this time, talking with one of the old women in town, I ran across a local tradition that, in a town about ten miles inland, some of the families were descended from Tory Yankees who’d been exiled from New England, after the Revolution.  I thought it was worth looking up, and one day I ran up there to see if I could find out anything about them.  It was Sunday and I had to . . .”

Marise was beside herself, her heart racing wildly.  She took hold of his arm and shook it with all her might.  “Neale, quick! quick!  Leave out all that. What did you do?”

She could see that he was surprised by her fierce impatience, and for an instant taken aback by the roughness of the interruption.  He stared at her.  How slow Neale was!