One day at the beginning of the last year of the old century she sat down to work out a problem in mechanics.
She never solved it. Indefinitely she began to scribble on the paper as in the olden time.
“Oh, God!” she cried, “give me a man who can resist temptation for the sake of good, and not because he is bound in by tradition or the world.”
And straightway she left this world and flew to that other. There she found the man she wanted, him who had gone there so strangely long ago as it seemed from the printed picture.
And Deborah began to write, and having once taken up the pen had not the power to lay it down.
CHAPTER XVII
From that time forward the village, its inmates, and the school became blanks to her. True, the school dragged her down like a prison chain each day, for she had grown to hate teaching, almost to loathe it. She watched the clock from hour to hour as it crawled slowly round, and longed with feverish impatience for the time when the trivial lessons should be over and she free to write again.
Never before had she written with such an absorbed interest, nor been so utterly unconscious of everything around.
After the first few chapters of her book had been written a new light suddenly burst upon it. It was as if in some curious way the crowd that had always stood around in that other world was standing there. And like lightning speed one night it came to her.
“These are the audience, those the living players,” said a voice.