He turned and walked slowly toward the house, stopping a little way along to look back and make sure that Morgan had not appeared. Thus he stood a little while, and then resumed his way.
The house was before him, shadows in the sharp angles of its roof, its windows catching the moonlight like wakeful eyes. There was a calm over it, and a somnolent peace. It seemed impossible that iniquitous desires could live and grow on a night like that. Ollie must be asleep, said he, and repentant in her dreams.
Joe felt that he might go to his rest with honesty. It would be welcome, as the desire of tired youth for its bed is strong. At the well he stopped again to look back for Morgan.
As he turned a light flashed in the kitchen, gleamed a moment, went out suddenly. It was as if a match had been struck to look for something quickly found, and then blown out with a puff of breath.
At once the fabric of his hopes collapsed, and his honest attempts to lift Ollie back to her smirched pedestal and invest her with at least a part of her former purity of heart, came to a painful end. She was preparing to leave. The hour when he must speak had come.
He approached the door noiselessly. It was closed, as he had left it, and within everything was still. As he stood hesitating before it, his hand lifted to lay upon the latch, his heart laboring in painful lunges against his ribs, it opened without a sound, and Ollie stood before him against the background of dark.
The moonlight came down on him through the half-bare arbor, and fell in mottled patches around him where he stood, his hand still lifted, as if to help her on her way. Ollie caught her breath in a frightened start, and shrank back.
“You don’t need to be afraid, Ollie–it’s Joe,” said he. 103
“Oh, you scared me so!” she panted.
Each then waited as if for the other to speak, and the silence seemed long.