Ardea of the strong heart and the calm inner vision had always had a feeling bordering on contempt for women of the hysterical type; yet now she felt herself trembling and slipping on the brink of the pit she had derided.

The third day brought surcease of a certain sort.  In the Gallic blood there is ever a trace of fatalism; the shrug is its expression.  It was generations back to the D’Aubignes, yet now and then some remote ancestor would reach up out of the shadowy past to lay a compelling finger on the latest daughter of his race.  Her word was passed, beyond honorable recall.  Somewhere and in some way she would find the courage to tell Vincent that she did not love him as the wife should love the husband; and if he should still exact the price, she would pay it.  After all, it would be a refuge, of a kind.

Now it is human nature to assume finalities and to base conduct on the assumption.  Conversely, it is not in human nature to tighten one knot without loosening another.  Having firmly resolved to be unflinchingly just to a Vincent Farley, one could afford to be humanely interested in the struggles shoreward or seaward of a poor swimmer in the welter of the tideway.  She did not put it thus baldly, even in her secret thought.  But the thing did itself.

The opportunities for marking the struggles of the poor swimmer were limited; but where is the woman who can not find the way when desire drives?  Ardea had something more than a speaking acquaintance with Mr. Frederic Norman who, as acting-manager of the foundry plant in Tom’s absence, had generously thrown one of the buildings open for a series of Sunday services for the workmen, promoted by Miss Dabney and the Reverend Francis Morelock.  Since the warm nights had come, Norman had taken a room at the Inn, climbing the mountain from the Paradise side in time for dinner, and going down in the cool of the morning after an early breakfast.

Being first and last a man of business, he knew, or seemed to know, nothing of the valley gossip, or of the social sentence passed on his chief by the Mountain View Avenue court.  When Ardea had assured herself of this, she utilized Norman freely as a source of information.

“You’ve known the boss a long time, haven’t you, Miss Dabney?” asked the manager, one evening when Ardea had made room for him in a quiet corner of the veranda between the Major’s chair and her own.

“Mr. Gordon?  Oh, yes; a very long time, indeed.  We were children together, you know.”

“Well, I’d like to ask you one thing,” said Frederic, the unfettered.  “Did you ever get to know him well enough to guess what he’d do next?  I thought I’d been pretty close to him, but once in a while he runs me up a tree so far that I get dizzy.”

“As for example?” prompted Miss Ardea, leaving the personal question in the air.

“I mean his way of breaking out in a new spot every now and then.  Last winter was one of the times, when he made up his mind between two minutes to chuck the pipe-making and go back to college.  And now he’s got another streak.”