Peter,
she has even got a new body. Her face is not the same."

"She is much handsomer," said Peter.

"Isn't she?" cried Linda enthusiastically. "And doesn't having a soul
and doesn't thinking about essential things make the most remarkable
difference in her? It is worth going through a fiery furnace to come out
new like that. I called her Abednego the other day, but she didn't know
what I meant."

Then they sat silent and watched the sea for a long time. By and by the
night air grew chill. Peter slipped from the rock and went up the beach
and came back with an Indian blanket. He put it very carefully around
Linda's shoulders, and when he went to resume his seat beside her he
found one of her arms stretching it with a blanket corner for him. So he
sat down beside her and drew the corner over his shoulder; and because
his right arm was very much in his way, and it would have been very
disagreeable if Linda had slipped from the rock and fallen into the
cold, salt, unsympathetic Pacific at nine o'clock at night--merely to
dispose of the arm comfortably and to ensure her security, Peter put it
around Linda and drew her up beside him very close. Linda did not seem
to notice. She sat quietly looking at the Pacific and thinking her own
thoughts. When the fog became damp and chill, she said they must be
going, and so they went back to their cars and drove home through the
sheer wonder of the moonlight, through the perfume of the orange
orchards, hearing the night song of the mockingbirds.

CHAPTER XXXIII. The Lady of the Iris

A few days later Linda and Peter went to San Francisco and helped
celebrate the marriage of Marian and Eugene Snow. They left Marian in a
home carefully designed to insure every comfort and convenience she ever
had planned, furnished in accordance with her desires. Both Linda and
Peter were charmed with little Deborah Snow; she was a beautiful and an
appealing child.

"It seems to me," said Linda, on the train going home, "that Marian will
get more out of life, she will love deeper, she will work harder, she
will climb higher in her profession than she would have done if she had
married John. It is difficult sometimes, when things are happening, to
realize that they are for the best, but I really believe this thing has
been for the level best. I think Marian is going to be a bigger woman in
San Francisco than she ever would have been in Lilac Valley. With that
thought I must reconcile myself."