All through she had been steady; now she was sweet again. "I want to free her. I want you to free her. And—whenever you do—I shall be waiting to give her to the world again."
They looked at each other now and Augustine could answer, with another smile; "You are the world, I suppose."
"Yes; I am the world," she accepted. "The actual fairy-godmother, with a magic wand that can turn pumpkins into coaches and put Cinderellas into their proper places."
Augustine had handed her up to her seat beside the groom. He tucked her rug about her. If he had laid aside anything to meet her on her own ground, he, too, had regained it now.
"But does the world always know what is the proper place?" was his final remark as she drove off.
She did not know that she could have found an answer to it.
VII
mabel was sitting beside her window when her son came in and the face she turned on him was white and rigid.