rt him; and
as she stroked him gently, she said, "Yes, ... our river would be
possible." But she would get so wet! "My skirts would be wet ..."

So three days went by in profound preoccupation. Her mind was a
battlefield, over which, back and forth, reeling and trampling, Love and
Jealousy--old enemies but now allies!--flung themselves against Reason,
which had no support but Fear. Each day Maurice's friendly letters
arrived; one of them--as Jealousy began to rout Reason and Love to cast
out Fear--she actually forgot to open! Mrs. Newbolt called her up on the
telephone once, and said, "Come 'round to dinner; my new cook is pretty
poor, but she's better than yours."

Eleanor said she had a little cold. "Cold?" said Mrs. Newbolt. "My
gracious! don't come near _me_! I used to tell your dear uncle I was
more afraid of a cold than I was of Satan! He said a cold _was_ Satan;
and I said--" Eleanor hung up the receiver.

So she was alone--and the wind blew, and the straws and leaves danced
over that battlefield of her empty mind, and she said:

"I'll give him Jacky," and then she said, "Our river." And then she
said, "But I must hurry!" He had written that he might reach home by the
end of the week. "He might come to-night! I must do it--before he comes
home." She said that while the March dawn was gray against the windows
of her bedroom, and the house was still. She lay in bed until, at six,
she heard the creak of the attic stairs and Mary's step as she crept
down to the kitchen, the silver basket clattering faintly on her arm.
Then she rose and dressed; once she paused to look at herself in the
glass: those gray hairs! ... Edith had called his attention to them so
many years ago! It was a long time since it had been worth while to pull
them out. ... All that morning she moved about the house like one in a
dream. She was thinking what she would say in her letter to him, and
wondering, now and then, vaguely, what it would be like, _afterward_?
She ate no luncheon, though she sat down at the table. She just crumbled
up a piece of bread; then rose, and went into the library to Maurice's
desk... She sat there for a long time, making idle scratches on the
blotting paper; her elbow on the desk, her forehead in her hand, she sat
and scrawled his initials--and hers--and his. And then, after about an
hour, she wrote:

... I want you to have Jacky. When I am dead you can get him, because
you can marry Lily. Of course I oughtn't to