"Tell me please, Miss Jordan. After all that you have said, you must."
The answer came in a whisper. "No."
"Thank you." There was that in the nurse's voice that left the other's heart hopeless, and robbed her of power to say more. She rose and moved toward the door.
The nurse accompanied her to the porch. "Miss Jordan." Charity paused. "I am very sorry. I fear you will never understand how—how mistaken you are. I—I shall not harm either your church or—your minister. Believe me, I am very, very sorry."
Miss Farwell could not return to the garden. He would be there. She could not meet him just yet. She must be alone. She must go somewhere to think this thing out.
Stealing from the house, she slipped away down the street. Without her conscious will, her feet led her toward the open country, to Academy Hill, to the grassy knoll under the oak in the old Academy yard.
The possibility had become a reality, and all the pain that she had foreseen, was hers. But with the pain was a great gladness.
Miss Farwell need not have fled from meeting Dan in the garden that afternoon. Dan was not in the garden. While the nurse, in her room, was greeting Miss Charity, Elder Jordan, who had stopped on his way home from the post office was knocking at the door of the minister's study.