y she looked at him. "What's the matter, John?"

"I'm waiting for tomorrow," he said almost roughly.

"So am I," she said, surprising herself so that she repeated the words
slowly, to know their meaning. "So am I--and it's here."

"Not till the dawn," he said. "Go to sleep."

Together their doors were softly closed and Helen knew now whose
footsteps were in the children's garden. She went to the window and
nodded to the poplars. "And you knew, I suppose; but so did I, really,
all the time."

She slept profoundly and woke to a new wonder for the possibilities of
life, a new fear for the dangers which might assail those who had much
to cherish; and now she descried dimly the truth she was one day to see
in the full light, that there is no gain without loss and no loss
without gain, that things are divinely balanced, though man may
sometimes throw his clumsy weight into the scale. Yet under these
serious thoughts there was a song in her heart and her pleasure in its
music shone out of her eyes so brilliantly that Rupert, watching her
with tolerant amusement, asked what had befallen her.

"It's only that it's Sunday," the quick-witted Miriam said and Helen
replied with the gravity which was more misleading than a lie: "Yes,
that's all."

Nevertheless, when Zebedee arrived on the moor, her brightness faded.
Already the desire of possession hurt her and Miriam had attached
herself to him as though she owned him. She was telling him about Philip
Caniper's death, about the money which was to come to them, and
asserting that Daniel now wanted to marry her more than ever. Daniel was
protesting through his blushes, and Zebedee was laughing. It all seemed
very foolish, and she was annoyed with Zebedee for even pretending to be
amused.

"Oh, don't," she murmured and lay back.

"Be quiet, prig!"

"She's not that, is she?" Zebedee asked, his strangely flecked eyes
twinkling.

"Oh, a bad one. She disapproves of everything she doesn't like herself."

"Helen, wake up! I want to know if this is true."

"Do you think it is?"

"I'm afraid it's very likely."

"Oh, dear!" she sighed, "I don't know what to do about it. A person
without opinions is just nothing, and you really were being very silly
just now. I hate jokes about marrying."

"H'm, they are rather feeble," Zebedee owned.

"Vulgar, I think," she said, with her little air of Mildred Caniper.

"Ah," said Rupert, tapping Daniel lightly on the head, "a man with a