For fifteen minutes—­perhaps half an hour—­after it rolled away from the Grantham Hotel there was absolute stillness in Miss Sherwood’s limousine, which she had assigned to Maggie and her father.  Maggie was near emotional collapse from what she had been through; and now she was sitting tight in one corner, away from the dark shadow in the other corner that was her newly discovered father who had cared for her so much that he had sought to erase from her mind all knowledge of his existence.  She wanted to say something—­do something; she was torn with a poignant hunger.  But she was so filled with pulsing desires and fears that she was impotent to express any of the million things within her.

And so they rode on, dark shadows, almost half the width of the deeply cushioned seat between them.  Thus they had ridden along Jackson Avenue, almost into Flushing, when the silence was broken by the first words of the journey.  They were husky words, yearning and afraid of their own sound, and were spoken by Maggie’s father.

“I—­I don’t know what to call you.  Will—­will Maggie do?”

“Yes,” she whispered.

“I’m—­I’m not much,” the husky voice ventured on; “but what you said about going away—­for my sake—­do you think you need to do it?”

“I’ve made—­such a mess of myself,” she choked out.

“Other people were to blame,” he said.  “And out of it all, I think you’re going to be what—­what I dreamed you were.  And—­and—­”

There was another stifling silence.  “Yes?” she prompted.

“I wanted to keep out of your life—­for your sake,” he went on in his strained, suppressed voice.  “But—­but if you’re not ashamed of me now that you know all”—­in the darkness his groping hand closed upon hers—­“I wish you wouldn’t—­go away from me, Maggie.”

And then the surging, incoherent thing in her that bad been struggling to say itself this last half-hour, suddenly found its voice in a single word: 

“Father!” she cried, and flung her arms around his neck.

“Maggie!” he sobbed, crushing her to him.

All the way to Cedar Crest they said not another word; just clung to each other in the darkness, sobbing—­the first miraculous embrace of a father and daughter who had each found that which they had never expected to have.

CHAPTER XXXVII

It was ten the next morning at Cedar Crest, and Larry Brainard sat in his study mechanically going over his figures and plans for the Sherwood housing project.

For Larry the storms of the past few weeks, and the whirlwind of last night, had cleared away.  There was quiet in the house, and through the open windows he could glimpse the broad lawn almost singing in its sun-gladdened greenness, and farther on he could glimpse the Sound gleaming placidly.  Once for perhaps ten minutes he had seen the overalled and straw-hatted figure of Joe Ellison busy as usual among the flowers.  He had strained his eyes for a glimpse of Maggie, but he had looked in vain.