Through the four worst Sundays of rain Herrick wrote and when he had finished went over the result with Jean. They haggled each point with a desperate show of interest. When Jean said a scene did not ring true, she explained very elaborately and carefully and Herrick listened and argued and in the end usually agreed. Jean often thought of Robert as some one who had died far away in the jungle.
In March the fury of the rain lessened, wore itself out in a succession of damp, drizzling days almost harder to stand than the steady downpour. Then the hills stood out once more softly green and clear against the blue sky. With the coming of spring, Herrick gave up his pretense of winter. The unfinished short story went into the waste basket. Jean was glad and the tension of her nerves relaxed.
It was a lovely day in May, when Jean's work brought her close to home about one o'clock and she decided to do the writing in the studio instead of going back to the noisy office. As she opened the door she pushed back an envelope of the gray paper that Pat used. Jean pounced on it and without waiting to take off her things, tore it open. There were only a few sentences on a half sheet:
"Will be down on the sixteenth.
"Train gets in about three. Don't meet me or upset your day in any way.
"Leave the key where I can find it. I like doormats best."
Pat was coming.
For the moment Jean could grasp nothing else. Pat was coming. She would be here in that very room. They would talk. It was years since they had talked. No, not years. Not quite two yet, since she and Pat had sat together and swung their feet from the sink board of the Girls' Rest Hall, and she had been almost hysterical because there was nothing in the world but teaching. Jean's eyes filled with tears and she dabbed angrily at them.
"You old fool! What do you expect? To feel the same always? No doubt Pat feels older and has changed a lot too."
But the idea of Pat's having changed frightened Jean. Pat must not have changed. She must be just the same sane, practical, efficient Pat. She would be. And she was coming, coming on the sixteenth and the sixteenth was to-day.