As she sat there she pictured for the hundredth time how she would invest her little capital and rearrange her life, if Amos consented to sell her the farm,—­how best to restore the home without elaborating the care of it, and take one or two people to live with her who had been ill or needed rest in cheerful surroundings.  Not always the same two, for that is paralyzing after a time when the freshness of energetic influence wears off; but her experience among her friends told her that in a city’s social life there was an endless supply of overwrought nerves and bodies.

The having a home was the motive, the guests the necessity.  Then she closed her eyes again and saw the upper portion of the rich meadow land that had lain fallow so long turned into a flower farm wherein she would raise blossoms for a well-known city dealer who had, owing to his artistic skill, a market for his wares and decorative skill in all the cities of the eastern coast.  She had consulted him and he approved her plan.

The meadow was so sheltered that it would easily have a two weeks’ lead over the surrounding country, and the desirability of her crop should lie in its perfection rather than rarity.  Single violets in frames, lilies-of-the-valley for Easter and spring weddings, sweet peas, in separate colours, peonies, Iris, Gladioli, asters, and Dahlias:  three acres in all.  Upon these was her hope built, for with a market waiting, what lay between her and success but work?

Yes, work and the farm.  Then came the vision of human companionship, such as her cousin Bartram and Mary Penrose shared.  Could flowers and a home make up for it?  After all, what is home?

Her thoughts tangled and snapped abruptly, but of one thing she was sure.  She could no longer endure teaching singing to assorted tone-deaf children, many of whom could no more keep on the key than a cow on the tight rope; and when she found a talented child and gave it appreciative attention, she was oftentimes officially accused of favouritism by some disgruntled parent with a political pull, for that was what contact with the public schools of a large city had taught her to expect.

A log snapped—­she looked at the clock.  It was exactly nine!  Going to the window, she pulled back the curtain; the old moon, that has a fashion of working northward at this time, was rising from a location wholly new to her.

She looked at Amos; he was very still, evidently asleep, yet unnaturally so, for the regular breathing of unconsciousness was not there and the firelight shadows made him look pinched and strange.  Suddenly she felt alone and panic stricken; she forgot the tests so well known to her of pulse taking, and all the countryside tales of strokes and seizures came back to her.  She did not hesitate a moment; a man was in the same house and she felt entirely outside of the strength of her own will.