“No, he couldn’t go for me.  I want to get one of the new catalogues at the library and pick out a book, and there is no sense in dragging father out.  He has a cold, too.  Why, there is nothing in the world to be afraid of, mother.”

“Well, don’t be any longer than you can help,” said Fanny.

Ellen, as she passed her grandmother’s house, saw a curtain drawn with a quick motion.  That happened nearly every time she passed.  She knew that the old woman was always on the lookout for her, and always bent on concealing it.  Mrs. Zelotes never went into her son’s house, and never spoke to Ellen in those days.  She had aged rapidly during the past year, and even her erect carriage had failed her.  She stooped rigidly when she walked.  She was fairly racked with love and hatred of Ellen.  She adored her, she could have kissed the ground she walked on, and yet she was so full of wrath against her for thwarting her hopes for her own advancement that she was conscious of cruel impulses in her direction.

Ellen walked along rapidly under the vast canopy of stars, about which she presently began to have a singular impression.  She felt as if they were being augmented, swelled as if by constantly oncoming legions of light from the space beyond space, and as if her little space of individuality, her tiny foothold of creation, was being constantly narrowed by them.

“I never saw so many stars,” she said to herself.  She looked with wonder at the Milky Way, which was like a zone of diamond dust.  Suddenly a mighty conviction of God, which was like the blazing forth of a new star, was in her soul.  Ellen was not in a sense religious, and had never united with the Congregational Church, which she had always attended with her parents; she had never been responsive to efforts made towards her so-called conversion, but all at once, under the stars that night, she told herself with an absolute certainty of the truth of it.  “There is something beyond everything, beyond the stars, and beyond all poor men, and beyond me, which is enough for all needs.  We shall have our portion in the end.”

She had been feeling discouraged lately, although she would not own it even to herself.  She saw Robert but seldom, and her aunt was no better.  She often wondered if there could be anything before her but that one track of drudgery for daily bread upon which she had set out.  She wondered if she ought not to say positively to Robert that there must be no thought of anything between them in the future.  She wondered if she were not wronging him.  Once or twice she had seen him riding with Miss Hemingway, and thought that, after all, that was a girl better suited to him, and perhaps if he had no hope whatever of her he might turn to the other to his own advantage.  But to-night, with the clear stimulus of the frost in her lungs, and her eyes and soul dazzled with the multiplicity of stars, she began to have a great impetus of courage, like a soldier on the morning of battle.  She felt as if she could fight for her joy and the joy of others, and victory would in the end be certain; that the chances of victory ran to infinity, and could not be measured.