erywhere for you," she cried. "Mr.
Carrington is simply dying to dance with you!"

She bounced, as only the solid actuality can bounce, into the dream,
precipitating the unwelcome presence of Mr. Carrington--a young man with
a golden beard and the manner of a commercial minor prophet--there also.
A few minutes later, as Virginia drifted away in his arms to the music
of the waltz, she saw, over the heads of the dancers, Oliver and Abby
walking slowly in the direction of the gate. A feeling of unreality
seized her, as though she were looking through an azure veil at the
world. The dancers among whom she whirled, the anxious mothers sitting
uneasily on chairs under the poplars, the flowering shrubs, the
rose-crowned summer-house, the yellow lanterns with the clouds of white
moths circling around them--all these things had turned suddenly to
shadows; and through a phantom garden, the one living figure moved
beside an empty shape, which was Abby. Her feet had wings. She flew
rather than danced in the arms of a shadow through this blue veil which
enveloped her. Life burned within her like a flame in a porcelain vase,
and this inner fire separated her, as genius separates its possessor,
from the ordinary mortals among whom she moved.

Walking home with John Henry after the party was over, it seemed to her
that she was lifted up and cradled in all the wonderful freshness of the
spring. The sweet moist air fanned her face; the morning stars shone
softly on her through the pearly mist; and the pale fingers of dawn were
spread like a beneficent hand, above the eastern horizon. "To-morrow!"
cried her heart, overflowing with joy; and something of this joy passed
into the saddest hour of day and brightened it to radiance.

At the gate she parted from John Henry, and running eagerly along the
path, opened the front door, which was unlocked, and burst into the
dining-room, where her mother, wearied of her long watch, had fallen
asleep beside the lamp, which was beginning to flicker.

"To-morrow!" still sang her heart, and the wild, sweet music of it
filled the world. "To-morrow!"

CHAPTER IX

THE GREAT MAN MOVES

Several weeks later, at the close of a June afternoon, Cyrus Treadwell
sat alone on the back porch of his house in Bolingbroke Street. He was
smoking, and, between the measured whiffs of his pipe, he leaned over
the railing and spat into a bed of miniature sunflowers which grew along
the stone ledge of the area