"You said I was a schemer."
"I didn't mean exactly that. I meant—oh, I don't know just what I did mean. Go along and do your own way, and I'll do mine."
"Sensible girl! I am glad you have come down from your high horse. Our tactics may be different but the end is the same. To the conqueror come the spoils. Really good-by?"
"Yes, or the mail will be closed."
She ran down stairs, took the now dry golf-cape from Mrs. Green's hands and went forth again to perform her errand. As she turned into the road she saw Kenneth Hilary, color-box in hand, trudging along. He was near enough to recognize her, which he did by a lifting of the cap, then he plunged into the path which led to Captain Purdy's wharf and she saw him disappear in the fog. Yet she was glad at heart to have met him. She remembered that he, too, exulted in storm and fog and rain. But suddenly she was chilled by the remembrance of their last talk. Perhaps he would never give her a chance to renew their friendship. He had taken her words so seriously that he might go away and—forget. Men did that. "Oh dear, what can I do?" she said aloud. "I must do something." Then with a flush of shame she remembered her lofty attitude with Ethel, and what Ethel had said about steel rails and tubes of paint. "Oh dear, I'm no better than she, not a bit," she sighed. "I'd like to run after him this minute and pretend that I had sprained my ankle or lost my way or any other foolish thing, just that I might speak to him. Oh dear, dear, it has come, that dreadful thing that I have been so afraid of, and have been pushing away from me. I don't care one little bit who bears off Cephas—and I do care a whole dreadful lot because Kenneth would not stop and speak to me. Oh, dear, dear. I see myself manoeuvring and scheming or else a lorn maid for the rest of my life. I can't leave everything to Fate, for Fate is so stupidly cruel sometimes."
So her thought ran as she continued along the road to the post-office. At the top of the flight of steps she tried to penetrate the fog to see if she could get a glimpse of Kenneth sketching from Captain Purdy's wharf, but the fog dropped down its soft impenetrable veil and all she could distinguish was the wharf and boat-house dimly outlined.
"He will paint beautiful things to-day," she told herself as she turned homeward, "beautiful, mysterious, charming things that I would love to see, and he will never show them to me—never. Some horrid, beastly wealthy person will buy them, perhaps some one like Cephas Mitchell with pop-eyes and lanky hair. He'll hang them up in his house and gloat over them. Oh dear, I am more kinds of an idiot than I supposed, but I cannot make up my mind to offer any advances."
As she entered the living-room of Wits' End, she saw Miss Elliott kneeling before the open fire with a boxful of letters by her side. She was laying them one by one on the burning logs, which shot up a renewed flare at each fresh accession of kindling. "What are you doing, Aunt Cam?" asked Gwen, throwing off her cape and joining her aunt.
"I am burning some letters which should have been destroyed long ago. They have been packed away in this box for years, and I have never had time to look over them. I found the box in the attic when we dismantled the old house, and should have looked at them then, but I was too busy. They were sent up here with the furniture, and this seemed a good day to look at them."
"What letters are they?" Gwen leaned forward to decipher the address on an envelope which was fast being consumed.