a restless child on the verge
of growing up into something unknown. He realized now that she had
counted for a great deal more to him than he knew at the time. It was a
continuous sort of relationship. He was always on the lookout for her as
he went about the town, always vaguely expecting her as he sat in his
office at night. He had never asked himself then if it was strange that
he should find a child of twelve the most interesting and companionable
person in Moonstone. It had seemed a pleasant, natural kind of
solicitude. He explained it then by the fact that he had no children of
his own. But now, as he looked back at those years, the other interests
were faded and inanimate. The thought of them was heavy. But wherever
his life had touched Thea Kronborg's, there was still a little warmth
left, a little sparkle. Their friendship seemed to run over those
discontented years like a leafy pattern, still bright and fresh when the
other patterns had faded into the dull background. Their walks and
drives and confidences, the night they watched the rabbit in the
moonlight,--why were these things stirring to remember? Whenever he
thought of them, they were distinctly different from the other memories
of his life; always seemed humorous, gay, with a little thrill of
anticipation and mystery about them. They came nearer to being tender
secrets than any others he possessed. Nearer than anything else they
corresponded to what he had hoped to find in the world, and had not
found. It came over him now that the unexpected favors of fortune, no
matter how dazzling, do not mean very much to us. They may excite or
divert us for a time, but when we look back, the only things we cherish
are those which in some way met our original want; the desire which
formed in us in early youth, undirected, and of its own accord.

III

FOR the first four years after Thea went to Germany things went on as
usual with the Kronborg family. Mrs. Kronborg's land in Nebraska
increased in value and brought her in a good rental. The family drifted
into an easier way of living, half without realizing it, as families
will. Then Mr. Kronborg, who had never been ill, died suddenly of cancer
of the liver, and after his death Mrs. Kronborg went, as her neighbors
said, into a decline. Hearing discouraging reports of her from the
physician who had taken over his practice, Dr. Archie went up from
Denver to see her. He found her in bed, in the room where he had