!"

She was gone. Unity sat down upon the porch steps and began to name upon
her fingers the eligible young men of three counties. In her anxiety to
account for Jacqueline's pallor and the dark beneath her eyes, she went
far afield, but she met with no success. "It's not one of them!" she
sighed at last. "And yet, she's changed--"

Jacqueline went slowly upstairs, a slender figure in white, touching
with her hand the polished balustrade. When she reached the long and
wide upper hall, she passed steadily along it, but she turned her eyes
upon a door at the far end, the door of the blue room. Arrived in her
own cool and fragrant chamber, she found Deb already asleep in the small
bed, her yellow hair spread upon the pillow, her gown open at the
throat, a rag doll in the hollow of her arm. Upon the floor, with her
head against the bed, sat Miranda, as fast asleep as her mistress. At
Jacqueline's touch she awoke, smiled widely, and was on her feet with a
spring. "Yaas, Miss Jacqueline, I done put Miss Deb to bed. Mammy Chloe
say dat niggah Joab don' know nothin' 'bout er broken ahm, an' she too
busy in de blue room. Yaas'm, I done mek Miss Deb wash her face an' say
her prayers. Kin I go now?"

Alone, Jacqueline stood for a minute beside the sleeping child, then
bent and kissed Deb's brown neck. Moving to a window, she sat down
before it, resting her arm upon the sill and her head upon her arm.
Outside the window grew a giant fir tree, shading the room, and giving
it at times an aspect too cold and northern. But Jacqueline loved the
tree, and loved and fed the birds that in winter perched upon the dark
boughs. Now, between the needles, the eastern sky looked blue and cold.
Jacqueline, sitting idle, felt her eyes fill with slow tears. They did
not fall. She was not lacking in self-control, and she told herself that
of late she had wept too often. She sat very still, her head bowed upon
her listless arm, while the moments passed, bearing with them pictures
seen through unshed tears. She was living over the days of the
Three-Notched Road, and she beheld each shifting scene by the light of a
passion that she believed to be unreasonable, unnatural, secret, and
without hope. Her uncle's voice came to her from the hall below.
"Jacqueline, Jacqueline!" She arose, bathed her eyes, and went
downstairs.

It was the custom of the family to gather after supper upon the great
white pillared porch, and to sit through the twilight. The m