Anne sought but could not find. The stained glass and wide arches of the churches; the few cozily placed chairs of ordinary rooms were as glaring in their claims as the thick carpet, the heavy oaken door and casement windows of the little gray stone church. The solemn music, the sentimental texts upon the walls, as artificial as the modulated voice of the Trained Reader and the bowed head of the Boston Lecturer.
Outwardly Anne grew quieter and quieter. Sometimes she saw Katya watching her with a mingling of triumph and curiosity that would have interested her deeply six months before. Now, nothing interested her. Not even the dependence of Rogie held her to the exclusion of this growing need to find a place of peace. Once, Rogie had seemed to fill every need, but now Anne knew within herself something over and above the power of any person or situation quite to fill. It had always been so. In her love for her mother and Belle, there had been the empty spot of longing for a wider life and deeper interests. Then Roger had come, with the wider life and deeper interests, but the tiny empty spot had remained, the very core of herself that had never melted into Roger's. Now, she and Roger could scarcely see each other across the space of separation.
Concerned with the pain of the world, Roger strode on, confusing the force of his own effort with the accomplishment of results. When, early in spring, he won the case of a Hindoo revolutionist, he was as excited as Rogie at a new toy. He came shouting down the loft, and because Katya was out, and he had to share this enthusiasm with some one, came to Anne.
"Singh's been released. They couldn't make their case. We've got them on the run." Perched on the railing about Anne's desk, he swung his feet like an excited boy. "Of course England will chase him out of India again, but he'll get in some deadly licks before she does. Gosh, but I'd like to be there to-day. Think of it, that slip of a fellow, stirring up that old race, prodding it out of its centuries of sleep."
But Anne did not see that old race rising from its sleep. At most it would be only a little turning, as Rogie turned and then settled to deeper sleep. She shrugged: "He will prod and then die."
"What of that? It doesn't nullify his accomplishment. Suppose millions more still have to do it. Can't you get the romance—if nothing else?"
Anne smiled faintly. "That's just what I do get—millions of sleepers—in an ageless sleep." Across the room, Black Tom was the center of an excited group, elated at the success of Singh. A messenger boy dashed in with a telegram. Two telephones rang wildly. "It's like a little child with a horn," she said quietly, "blowing because he likes to hear the noise himself."
Roger's hands clenched and he dropped quickly from the railing.
"You've got—just about as much imagination—as a flea."