“Yes.”

She looked at me with her little, sweet, quick smile, and we sat down for a moment on her couch together, each with a sense that neither would say one word too sharply pressing.

“Dear mother, why not go to the board meeting?  You don’t need to protect me so.  You can’t protect me every minute.  You see, of course, last night Charles—­told me of what everybody thinks.”  Her voice throbbed again.  She stopped for a minute.  “But for weeks and weeks I had felt something like this coming toward me.  And now that it’s come,” she went on, bravely, “we can only just do as we always have done—­and not make any difference—­can we?”

“Except that I feel I must be here, because we can’t know from minute to minute what may come up.”

“You feel you can’t leave me, mother.  But you can.  I want to see whoever comes, just as usual.  I’d have to at some time, you know, at any rate.  And I mean to do it now—­until I go away out of Eastridge.  Charles is going to arrange that so very wonderfully.  He has gone to New York now to see about it.”

“He has, my dear?” I said, in some surprise.

“Yes.  And, mother, about—­about what’s over,” she whispered.

“Yes.”

“Oh, just—­just it couldn’t all have happened in this way if”—­she spoke in quite a clear, soft voice, looking straight into my eyes, with one of her quick turns—­“he were a real man—­anybody I could think of as being my husband.  It was just that I didn’t truly know him.  That was all.”

We held each other’s hands fast for one moment of perfect understanding before we rose.

“Then I’ll go, dear, this morning, just as you like,” I said.  She came into my room and fastened my cuff-pins for me.  “Why, mother, I don’t believe you and your little duchesse cuffs and your little, fine, gold watch-chain have ever been away from the chair of the library committee at a board meeting for twenty years!  Just think what a sensation you were going to make if I hadn’t interfered!  There, how nice you look!”

The weather was so inclement during my absence that I felt quite secure concerning all intrusion for her.  At noon the storm rose high, with a close-timed thunder and lightning; the Episcopal church spire was struck; two trees were blown over in the square; and, instead of ordering Dan and the horses out in this tumult, I dined with a board member living next the library, and drove home at three o’clock when the violence of the gale had abated.

The house was perfectly still when I reached it.  The children were at school; Cyrus, at the factory; mother, napping, with her door closed.  In her own room up-stairs, in the middle of the house, Peggy sat alone, in a loose wrapper, with her hair flying over her shoulders.  An open book lay unnoticed in her lap.  Her face was white and tear-stained, and her eyes looked wild and ill.

As her glance fell on me I saw her need of me, and hurried in to close the door.  “Oh, mother; mother!” she moaned.  “Such a morning!  It’s all come back—­all I fought against—­all I was conquering.  What does it mean?  What does it mean?”