In an immense hush, like the dusky silence in a cathedral aisle or in the dark heart of the woods, there was something there waiting for her to go and find it.

That hush had fallen on her at the sight of Neale’s face, at the sound of his voice, as he had looked at her and spoken to her, at the last, just before he went away back to the children.  Those furiously racing pulses of hers had been stilled by it into this steady rhythm which now beat quietly through her.  The clashing thoughts which had risen with malevolent swiftness, like high, battling shadowy genii, and had torn her in pieces as they fought back and forth, were stilled as though a master-word had been spoken which they must all obey.

The old house, silent under the stars, lay quiet in its vigil about her, but slept no more than she; the old house which had been a part of her childhood and her youth now watched over her entry into another part of her journey.

For as she lay there, wide-awake, watching the light of the candle, she felt that she knew what was waiting for her, what she must go to find.  It was her maturity.

And as she lay quiet, her ears ringing in the solemn hush which Neale’s look and voice had laid about her, she felt slowly coming into her, like a tide from a great ocean, the strength to go forward.  She lay still, watching the candle-flame, hovering above the wick which tied it to the candle, reaching up, reaching up, never for a moment flagging in that transmutation of the dead matter below it, into something shining and alive.

She felt the quiet strength come into her like a tide.  And presently, as naturally as a child wakes in the morning, refreshed, and feels the impulse to rise to active effort again, she sat up in bed, folded her arms around her knees, and began to think.

Really to think this time, not merely to be the helpless battle-field over which hurtling projectiles of fierce emotions passed back and forth!  She set her life fairly there before her, and began to try to understand it.

As she took this first step and saw the long journey stretching out before her, she knew on what staff she leaned.  It was Neale’s belief that she was strong and not weak, that she could find out, if she tried, what was deepest and most living in her heart.  With this in her hand, with that great protecting hush about her, she set forth.  She was afraid of what she might find, but she set forth.

She must begin at the beginning this time, and go steadily forward from one step to the next, not her usual involuntary plunge, not the usual closing over her head of those yelling waters of too vivid impression.

The beginning had been . . . yes, the first conscious beginning had been the going away of little Mark, out of his babyhood into his own child-life.  He had gone out and left an empty place behind him, which till then had been filled with the insistent ever-present need for care for the physical weakness of babyhood.  And she had known that never again would Mark fill that place.