With that big thought flowing through her, she slipped from the bed. The night was warm, soft little breezes coming through the open window. She went to the closet, found her slippers, put them on, and with a backward glance at the unconscious Maizie, left the room.
The hall lay quiet, the tiny night lamp flickering in its place on the small table set near her mother's room—that mother, ready at the first sound to spring to any need of her children.
Downstairs Suzanna went swiftly, and there in the dining-room, as she had thought, she found her father. He was sitting at the long table, above which hung the new lamp with its pink shade and long brass chain. His head was bent over a big book, and Suzanna knew that he was studying. She paused half-way to him. In her white night gown, her hair flowing over her shoulders, she looked like a small visitor from another higher plane. At last her father, impelled, turned and saw her. At once he opened wide his arms, and she went into them.
She lay, her cheek pressed against his, for a long time. All the thoughts that had raced through her upstairs in the sleepless hours returned to her, but she had to struggle to find language in which to tell them.
"Daddy," she began, "maybe The Machine can't work except where it was born."
"Tell me all that's in your heart, little girl," he said.
"Well, we've all thought of The Machine, and loved it and believed in it ever since I was the tiniest girl, and you've talked to us of what it was to mean."
"All true, my child, all true."
"And The Machine stood there and listened, daddy." She released herself from his clasp and stood very straight. Her dark eyes seeing pictures, were brilliantly wide. Her breath came quickly from between her parted lips: "And so it grew and grew, and soon out of its soul it sent colors. And it loved the man who made it, and it loved his little children, and made them all want to be good and do something for others.
"And then one day, they took it away from its home and into a big mill, and men crowded around it and looked at it, but they didn't love it, and they didn't believe in it. And it felt shy and hurt and the color stayed in its soul and wouldn't come forth.