d old paths where were
in durance things that did their best to escape, and were disquieting. I
thought also of Calliope, of whose story I had heard a little from one
and another. And it seemed to me that possibly Delia More's laughter and
her wistfulness summed us all up.

When we drew up at the entrance to Proudfit House we all alighted,
Calliope and Abel and I to walk home. But while we were saying good
night to Delia, the door opened and Clementina Proudfit stood against
the light. The car was to wait, she said, to take Mr. Baring, the
lawyer, to the midnight train. And then, as she saw her:--

"Calliope!" she cried, "I never wanted anybody so much. Come in and make
Mr. Baring a cup of your good coffee--you will, Calliope? Mother and I
will be with him for half an hour yet. Come, all of you, and help her."

We went in, lingering for a moment by the drawing-room fire while Miss
Clementina went below stairs; and I noted how, in that room colourful
and of fair proportion, Abel Halsey in his shabby clothes moved as
simply as if the splendour were not there. He stood looking down at
Delia, in her white dress, the crimson cloak catching the firelight;
while Calliope and I, before a length of Beauvais tapestry, talked with
spirit about both tapestry and coffee-making. ("My grandmother use' to
crochet faces an' figgers in her afaghans, too," Calliope commented,
"an' when I looked at 'em they use' to make me feel kind o' mad. But
with these, I don't care at all.") And when Miss Clementina returned,--

"Now," Calliope said to me, "you come with me an' help about the coffee,
will you? An' Delia, you an' Abel stay here. Nothin' will put me out o'
my head so quick--_nothin'_--as too many flyin' 'round the kitchen when
I'm tryin' to do work."

We went downstairs, and Miss Clementina rejoined her mother and the
lawyer in the library, and Delia and Abel were left alone together in
the firelight. If I had been a dream, and had been intending to come
back at all, I think that I must have come then.

"_Pray_, why don't you?" said Calliope to me almost savagely on the
kitchen stairs.

The coffee-making was a slow process and a silent one. Calliope and I
were both absorbed in what had so wonderfully come about: That Delia
More, who was dead, was alive again; or rather, that her spirit, patient
within her through all the years of its loneliness, was coming forth at
the sound of Abel's voice. We were alone in the kitchen, and when