own, and she heard his voice pleading forgiveness--for
her silence alarmed him. And she heard herself saying:--"It was my fault
as much as yours."

And his vehement reply:--"It wasn't anybody's fault--it was natural, it
was wonderful, Janet. I can't bear to see you sad."

To see her sad! Twice, during the afternoon and evening, he had spoken
those words--or was it three times? Was there a time she had forgotten?
And each time she had answered: "I'm not sad." What she had felt indeed
was not sadness,--but how could she describe it to him when she herself
was amazed and dwarfed by it? Could he not feel it, too? Were men so
different?... In the cab his solicitation, his tenderness were only to be
compared with his bewilderment, his apparent awe of the feeling he
himself had raised up in her, and which awed her, likewise. She had
actually felt that bewilderment of his when, just before they had reached
the station, she had responded passionately to his last embrace. Even as
he returned her caresses, it had been conveyed to her amazingly by the
quality of his touch. Was it a lack all women felt in men? and were
these, even in supreme moments, merely the perplexed transmitters of
life?--not life itself? Her thoughts did not gain this clarity, though
she divined the secret. And yet she loved him--loved him with a
fierceness that frightened her, with a tenderness that unnerved her....

At the Hampton station she took the trolley, alighting at the Common,
following the narrow path made by pedestrians in the heavy snow to
Fillmore Street. She climbed the dark stairs, opened the dining-room
door, and paused on the threshold. Hannah and Edward sat there under the
lamp, Hannah scanning through her spectacles the pages of a Sunday
newspaper. On perceiving Janet she dropped it hastily in her lap.

"Well, I was concerned about you, in all this storm!" she exclaimed.
"Thank goodness you're home, anyway. You haven't seen Lise, have you?"

"Lise?" Janet repeated. "Hasn't she been home?"

"Your father and I have been alone all day long. Not that it is so
uncommon for Lise to be gone. I wish it wasn't! But you! When you didn't
come home for supper I was considerably worried."

Janet sat down between her mother and father and began to draw off her
gloves.

"I'm going to marry Mr. Ditmar," she announced.

For a few moments the silence was broken only by the ticking of the
old-fashioned clock.

"Mr. Ditmar!" said Hannah, at length.