Mr. Marsh's silences were as abysmal as his speech was Niagara-like on occasion. He said nothing.
Elly stirred and looked toward the doorway. Touclé stood there, her shoe-button eyes not blinking in the lamp-light although she probably had been sitting on the steps of the kitchen, looking out into the darkness, in the long, motionless vigil which made up Touclé's evenings. As they all turned their faces towards her, she said, "The cereus is going to bloom tonight," and disappeared.
Marise welcomed this diversion. Ever since that absurd little gesture about the photograph, she had felt thickening about her . . . what? What you call "depression" (whatever that meant), the dull hooded apparition that came blackly and laid its leaden hand on your heart. This news was just the thing. It would change what was threatening to stand stagnant and charge it with fresh running currents. She got up briskly to her feet.
"Come on, children," she said. "I'll let you sit up beyond bed-time tonight. Scatter quick, and put on your things. We'll all go down the road to the Powers house and see the cereus in bloom."
The children ducked quickly out of the room, thudding along softly in their felt slippers. Scramblings, chatterings, and stamping sounded back from the front hall, as they put on their boots and wraps.
"Wouldn't you like to come, too?" she asked the men, rescuing them from the rather high-and-dry position in which this unexpected incident had left them. It was plainly, from their faces, as inexplicable as unexpected. She explained, drawing a long, plain, black silk scarf closely about her head and shoulders, "Why, yes, do come. It's an occasion as uniquely Ashleyian as pelota is Basque. You, Mr. Marsh, with your exhaustive inquiries into the habits and manners of Vermont mountaineers, your data won't be complete unless you've seen Nelly Powers' night-blooming cereus in its one hour of glory. Seriously, I assure you, you won't encounter anything like it, anywhere else."
As Marsh looked at her, she noted with an inward amusement that her words had lighted a smouldering glow of carefully repressed exasperation in his eyes. It made her feel quite gay and young to be teasing somebody again. She was only paying him back in his own coin. He himself was always telling everybody about his deep interest in the curious quaint ways of these mountaineers. And if he didn't have a deep interest in their curious quaint ways, what else could he give as a reason for staying on in the valley?
The men turned away to get their hats. She settled the folds of her heavy black silk mantilla more closely about her head, glancing at herself in the mirror. She smiled back with sympathy at the smiling face she saw there. It was not so often since the war that she saw her own face lighted with mirth.
Gravely, something deep on the edge of the unconscious called up to her, "You are talking and feeling like a coquette."
She was indignant at this, up in arms to defend human freedom. "Oh, what a hateful, little-villagey, prudish, nasty-minded idea!" she cried to herself. "Who would have thought that narrowness and priggishness could rub off on a person's mind like that! Mrs. Bayweather could have thought that! Mercy! As if one civilized being can't indulge in a light touch or two in human intercourse with another!"