p had never looked upon the face of a sleeping
woman, and it stirred him deeply. He became as rigid as marble; the
heat beat upon him as it might have upon stone. And then--as such wild
things do occur, his old, familiar dream came to him; he seemed _in_
the dream. He had at last opened one of those closed doors and was
seeing what the secret room held! He was part of the dream as he was
of his book in the making.

He breathed lightly; he did not move--but he was overcome by waves of
emotion that had never before even lapped his feet.

At that instant Mary-Clare's eyes opened. For a moment they held his;
then she turned, sighed, and he believed that she had not really
awakened.

Northrup rose stiffly and made his way to his room.

"She was asleep!" he fiercely thought until he was safe behind his
locked door!

"Was she?" He had to face that in the silence of the hours after.
"I'll know when I next meet her." This was almost a groan.

CHAPTER IX

Kathryn Morris, as the days of Northrup's absence stretched into
weeks, grew more and more restless. She began to do some serious
thinking, and while this developed her mentally, the growing pains
hurt and she became twisted.

Heretofore she had been borne along on a peaceful current. She was
young and pretty and believed that everyone saw her as she wanted them
to see her--a charming, an unusually charming girl.

People had always responded to her slightest whim, but suddenly her
own particular quarry had eluded her; did not even pine for her; was
able to keep silent while he left her and his mother to think what
they chose.

At this moment Kathryn placed herself beside Helen Northrup as a timid
debutante shrinks beside her chaperon.

"And that old beast"--Kathryn in the privacy of her bedchamber could
speak quite openly to herself--"that old beast, Doctor Manly,
suggested that at forty I might be fat if----" Well, it didn't matter
about the "if." Kathryn did a bit of mental arithmetic, using her
fingers to aid her. What was the difference between twenty-four and
forty? The difference seemed terrifyingly _little_. "A fat forty! Oh,
good Lord!"

Kathryn was in bed and it was nine-thirty in the morning! She sprang
out and looked at herself in the mirror.

"Well, my body hasn't found it out yet!" she whispered, and her pretty
white teeth showed complacently.

Then she sat down in a deep chair and took account of stock. That
"fat-forty" was a mere panic.