But she refused to give up hope. She thought of Matthew in the night; she thought of him the next morning, when, wakened by the strains which she had heard Kreisler play, she ran down the stairs to find the source of the miracle in a victrola at which Mrs. Sassaman and her father stood beaming; she thought of him at intervals through the snow-bound, pleasant day; she thought of him when, with Mrs. Sassaman, she went to the Lutheran celebration and listened to the children singing their carols and saw—oh, beautiful sight!—a tree all set with gleaming candles.
Mrs. Sassaman felt the Christmas spirit, and her heart warmed to those whom she served. She was a loyal soul and she often defended Dr. Levis when her friends blamed him for Matthew's departure. Her marital aspirations had grown less keen; she asked only to stay and serve. With this thought in mind she visited Levis in his office.
"I would rather be Manda," said she, as though the day of her request to be called Mrs. Sassaman were but yesterday.
"Very well," said Levis. "I like it better, it is friendlier."
She sat down uninvited. She gathered now and then from her friends descriptions of extraordinary diseases, and these she reported to Levis, believing them to be professionally useful. She told now of the fearful pain which "took" the friend of her friend, of the treatment by the medical doctor and by the pow-wow doctor and of the "awful witality" of the sufferer's constitution. When she had finished she rose quickly and went happily away.
Ellen thought of Matthew every day through the winter—in the short mornings when there seemed to be so much to learn; in the afternoons when the world moved more slowly; in the evenings when she recited her lessons. If he had stayed in school, he would be very wise indeed. But instead of studying he preferred to work in the stocking factory at Ephrata—that was what Levis's son was doing now!
One spring evening Ellen went for a walk. The frost was out of the ground; the April air was full of the odor of wet earth, and when one stood still one could hear little, pleasant sounds of running water. She had passed the time when her æsthetic sense was limited to pleasure in a glass filled with wild roses, or a gratifying arrangement of autumn leaves; she had begun to observe the delicate colors near the horizon, the soft purple of the old fences, the shapes of trees and of groups of trees. On this spring evening it was heavenly to be alive; one forgot one's haste to be older, one's regret that learning was a slow process, one's desire to see a thousand places, the cathedral of Rheims, for one, and the Doge's palace and the church of St. Sophia for others, which one would, which one must, see some day. She forgot even Matthew.
Then Matthew recalled himself. Ellen was walking slowly, but not so slowly as two persons who came toward her. At the beginning of the descent into the little hollow where the stream ran, she stopped and stood still to listen to the bubbling water and from there discerned, silhouetted against the yellow sky, two dark figures that might well have been ghosts of the early settlers of the land. The man's figure was tall, the woman's short; she wondered what couple was courting on this pleasant evening. Imagination made her flush suddenly, but before she had time to translate the incident into her own experience, the familiarity of the man's outline startled her. There was only one person who had shoulders like that and that was Matthew, who was now a Seventh-Day Baptist, having been plunged one morning in the cold waters of the creek.
The girl with Matthew was Millie König, could be no other, and the young people of the Seventh-Day Baptists did not walk with each other unless they were betrothed!
She hurried home with her miserable news.