What Mary-Clare did see in Northrup’s heroine was a maddening possibility that he was letting slip through his fingers. At first this puzzled her; pained her. She was still timid about expressing her feeling. But so strong was Northrup’s touch in most of his work that at last he drove his quiet, silent critic from her moorings. She asked that she might have a copy of a certain part of the book.
“I want to think it out with my woman-brain,” she laughingly explained. “When you read right at this spot––well, you see, it doesn’t seem clear. When I have thought it out alone, then I will tell you and be––oh! very bold.”
And Northrup had complied.
He had blazed for himself, some time before, a roundabout trail through the briery underbrush from the inn to within a few hundred feet of the cabin. Often he watched from this hidden limit. He saw the smoke rise from the chimney; once or twice he caught a glimpse of Mary-Clare sitting at the rough table, and, after she had taken those chapters away, he knew they were being read there.
Alone, waiting, expecting he knew not what, Northrup became alarmingly aware that Mary-Clare had got a tremendous hold upon him. The knowledge was almost staggering. He had felt so sure; had risked so much.
He could not deceive himself any longer. Like other men, he had played with fire and had been burnt. “But,” he devoutly thought, “thank God, I have started no conflagration.”