t
I had never been to Tuxedo, Talcott replied that some time I must go
there--I should like it--he was sure that I should like it, though the
crowd was getting rather mixed. Having thus quieted me, he reverted to
Bar Harbor and the summer, to various persons and events concerning
which I was supremely ignorant. I left abruptly perhaps. I had
forgotten the problem as to whom I should say my farewell last.
Penelope said that I must come again and often. Mrs. Bannister gave me
a pleasant but, I thought, a condescending smile, and Rufus Blight
followed me down the stairs, talking platitudes about the weather while
he called a man to bring my coat and hat.

The grilled door closed behind me, and I walked down the darkening
street. I had found Penelope grown lovelier than the loveliest figure
of my boyish dreams. Yet it was as though I had found her in another
world than mine, and moving among another race. She might remember the
boy whom she had dragged from the mountain stream, the boy whom she had
carried to the desolation of her humble home; could she long remember
the awkward man who sat on the edge of his chair and scattered crumbs,
who when he talked could talk only of old Bill Hansen and Stacy Shunk?
The longing for the valley was gone. Had the world been mine I would
have given it for a card to the dance that night, however mixed the
crowd, for then I should be near her. If I would be near her, then her
friends must be my friends, and, whether they would or no, I swore that
day they should be.

The hall of Miss Minion's house smelled terribly of cooking that night
as I passed through it. Standing at last in my own narrow room, I
brought my clinched fist down on my table as I registered my vow that I
would attain to her world. Then I sank down and covered my face with
my hands, for out of the little frame Gladys Todd was looking at me.

CHAPTER XVII

When I sat again on the great divan, I said to myself that, after all,
the alien mind who designed this room had worked with cunning; he must
have seen in his fancy the very picture that was now so delightful to
my eyes--the gray old fireplace with its tall columns wound with vines
whose delicate leaves quivered as the firelight fanned them; before it
Penelope, a slender figure, softly drawn in the evening's shadow, bent
over the low tea-table as she worked with the rebellious lamp; from
above, looking down kindly, half smiling, Reynolds's majestic la