When the Von Praags had gone upstairs, she walked with him to the porch, and they stood at the top of the steps for a moment, the rich scent of the climbing LaMarque and Banksia roses heavy about them, and the dark starry arch of the sky above.  Sidney, a little tired, but pleased with her dinner and her guests, and ready for a breath of the sweet summer night before going upstairs, was confused by having her heart suddenly begin to thump again.  She looked at Barry, his figure lost in the shadow, only his face dimly visible in the starlight, and some feeling, new, young, terrifying, and yet infinitely delicious, rushed over her.  She might have been a girl of seventeen instead of a sober woman fifteen years older, with wifehood, and motherhood, and widowhood all behind her.

“A wonderful night!” said Barry, looking down at the dark mass of tree-tops that almost hid the town, and at the rising circle of shadows that was the hills.

“And a good place to be, Santa Paloma,” Sidney added, contentedly.  “It’s my captured dream, my own home and garden!” With her head resting against one of the pillars of the porch, her eyes dreamily moving from the hills to the sky and over the quiet woods, she went on thoughtfully:  “You know I never had a home, Barry; and when I visited here, I began to realize what I was missing.  How I longed for Santa Paloma, the creek, and the woods, and my little sunny room after I went away!  But even when I was eighteen, and we took a house in Washington, what could I do?  I ‘came out,’ you know.  I loved gowns and parties then, as I hope the girls will some day; but I knew all the while it wasn’t living.”  She paused, but Barry did not speak.  “And, then, before I was twenty, I was married,” Sidney went on presently, “and we started off for St. Petersburg.  And after that, for years and years, I posed for dressmakers; I went the round of jewelers, and milliners, and manicures; I wrote notes and paid calls.  I let one strange woman come in every day and wash my hands for me, and another wash my hair, and a third dress me!  I let men—­ who were in the business simply to make money, and who knew how to do it!—­tell me that my furs must be recut, or changed, and my jewels reset, and my wardrobe restocked and my furniture carried away and replaced.  And in the cities we lived in it’s horrifying to see how women slave, and toil, and worry to keep up.  Half the women I knew were sick over debts and the necessity for more debts.  I felt like saying, with Carlyle, ‘Your chaos-ships must excuse me’; I’m going back to Santa Paloma, to wear my things as long as they are whole and comfortable, and do what I want to do with my spare time!”

“You missed your playtime,” Barry said; “now you make the most of it.”