"But about Tom Fulton. I was not married to him. I lied about it. It isn't possible that I seem—the same—to you."
"You would always seem the same to me," he answered,—and she found herself smiling at the beauty of his voice. "How could you be different? These things are just things that happen to you. Should I like you less if you were caught in the rain, or got your pretty dress muddy?"
"How do you know it is a pretty dress?" she asked irrepressibly.
"Because it's your dress. Run home, now, and brush your hair."
She went at once, and, in spite of her doubts, light-heartedly. He made her feel, as the night did, that here in this present life, as in the outer universe, are great spaces still unexplored. Everything had possibilities. Sprinkle new pollen on a flower and its fruit would take on other forms. Stretch out a hand and you might be led into unguessed delights, even after you were dulled with pain. Sleeping in the air, even, were forces to nourish and revive, dormant only because we do not call upon them. She smiled into the night, and her heart called believingly.
XIX
Madam Fulton sat on the veranda, in the shade of the vines. It was rather early in the morning, and Electra was about her methodical tasks. Billy Stark sat reading the paper, but nevertheless not failing, from time to time, to look up and give his old friend a smile. Madam Fulton could not answer it. She felt estranged in a world where she had failed to learn the values.
"Billy," she said at length, "do you think she is right?"
"Who?"