Desire noticing the new seriousness of his face was conscious of a pang of guilt.  It seems such crass ingratitude to doubt for one instant the stability of the happiness he had given her.  Had he not done more than it had seemed possible for anyone to do?  From the first she had overflowed with silent gratitude to him.  There was wonder yet in the apparent ease with which he had sauntered into the prison of her life and, with a laugh and jest, set her free.  He had shown her, for the first time in her life, the blessedness of receiving.  Those whose nature it is to give greatly are not ungenerous to the giving of others.  It is a small and selfish mind which fears to take, and Desire was neither small nor selfish.  She had hidden the thanks she could not speak deep in her heart, letting them lie there, a core of sweetness, sweeter for its silence.

Who shall say when in this secret core a wonderful something began to quicken and to grow?  So fine were its beginnings that Desire herself knew them only as new bloom and color, ’violets sweeter, the blue sky bluer’—­the old eternal miracle of a new-made earth.

She had called this new thing friendship and had been content.  Only today, when she had for an instant glimpsed life through the eyes of Agnes Martin, had there seemed possible a greater word.  In that quiet room another name had whispered around her heart like the first breath of a rising wind.  She had not dared to listen.  Yet, without listening, she heard.  And now, through Li Ho’s letter, that other Self who would have none of love, stretched out a phantom hand and beckoned.

The professor took the letter from her gravely, retaining, for an instant the unsteady hand that gave it.

“Aren’t you able to get away from it yet?” he asked kindly.

“No.  Perhaps I never shall.  When the memory comes back I feel—­sick.  It is even worse in retrospect.  When it was my daily life, I lived it.  But now it seems impossible.  Am I getting more cowardly, do you think?”

Spence smiled.  “I hope you are,” he told her.  “When you lived under a daily strain you were probably keyed to a sort of harmony with it.  Now you are getting more normal.  Life is a thing of infinite adjustment.”

“You think I could get ‘adjusted’ again if I had to?”

“You won’t have to.  Why discuss it?”

“Because it puzzles me.  Why do I mind things more now than I did?  I used to feel quite casual about father’s oddities.  They never seemed to exactly matter.  But now,” naively, “I would so much like to have a father like other people.”

“That is more normal, too.”

“I suppose,” she went on, as if following her own thoughts, “what Li Ho calls the moon-devil is really a disease.  Have you ever told Dr. John about father, Benis?  What did he say?” The professor fidgeted.  “Oh, nothing much.  He couldn’t, you know, without more data.  But he thinks his periodical spells may be a kind of masked epilepsy.  There are some symptoms which look like it.  The way the attacks come on, with restlessness and that peculiar steely look in the eye, the unreasoning anger and especially the—­er—­general indications.”  The professor came to a stammering end, suddenly remembering that she did not know that last and worst of the moon-devil symptoms.