wanted to speak to you. I suppose I'd better
go down to the office to-morrow and talk to Mr. Burden, hadn't I?"

"Come about noon, and I'll tell him to expect you. Well, if you ain't
coming in, I reckon I'll close this door."

Looking up a minute later from the pavement Oliver saw his aunt rocking
slowly back and forth at the window of her room, and the remembrance of
her fell like a blight over his happiness.

By the time he reached High Street a wind had risen beyond the hill near
the river, and the scattered papers on the pavement fled like grey wings
before him into the darkness. As the air freshened, faces appeared in
the doors along the way, and the whole town seemed drinking in the
cooling breeze as if it were water. On the wind sped, blowing over the
slack figure of Mrs. Treadwell; blowing over the conquering smile of
Susan, who was unbinding her long hair; blowing over the joy-brightened
eyes of Virginia, who dreamed in the starlight of the life that would
come to her; blowing over the ghost-haunted face of her mother, who
dreamed of the life that had gone by her; blowing at last, beyond the
river, over the tired hands of the little seamstress, who dreamed of
nothing except of how she might keep her living body out of the
poorhouse and her dead body out of the potter's field. And over the
town, with its twenty-one thousand souls, each of whom contained within
itself a separate universe of tragedy and of joy, of hope and of
disappointment, the wind passed as lightly it passed over the unquiet
dust in the streets below.

BOOK II

THE REALITY

CHAPTER I

VIRGINIA PREPARES FOR THE FUTURE

"Mother, I'm so happy! Oh! was there ever a girl so happy as I am?"

"I was, dear, once."

"When you married father? Yes, I know," said Virginia, but she said it
without conviction. In her heart she did not believe that marrying her
father--perfect old darling that he was!--could ever have caused any
girl just the particular kind of ecstasy that she was feeling. She even
doubted whether such stainless happiness had ever before visited a
mortal upon this planet. It was not only wonderful, it was not only
perfect, but it felt so absolutely new that she secretly cherished the
belief that it had been invented by the universe especially for Oliver
and herself. It was ridiculous to imagine that the many million pairs of
lovers that were marrying every instant had each experienced a miracle
like this, and yet l