Mary-Clare inclined her head. She did not speak. She watched her uninvited guest go down the trail, pass out of sight. Then she went back to her chair to recover from the shock that had dazed her.
The atmosphere of the little cabin could not long be polluted by so brief an experience as had just occurred, and presently Mary-Clare was enfolded by the old comfort and vision.
She could weigh and estimate things now, and this she did bravely, justly. Like Northrup in Larry’s cabin the night before, she became more a sensitive plate upon which pictures flashed, than a personality that was thinking and suffering. Such things as had now happened to her, she knew, happened in books. Always books, books, for Mary-Clare, and the old doctor’s philosophy that gave strength but no assurance. The actual relation existing between Northrup and herself became a solid and immovable fact. She had not fully accepted it before; neither had he. They had played with it as they had the golden hours that they would not count or measure.
Nothing mattered but the truth. Mary-Clare knew that the wonderful thing had had no part in her decision as to Larry––others would not believe that, but she must not 195 be swayed; she knew she had taken her steps faithfully as she had seen them––she must not stumble now because of any one, anything.
“It’s what you do to love that counts!” Almost fiercely Mary-Clare grasped this. And in that moment Noreen, Northrup’s mother, even Larry and the girl who had just departed, put in their claim. She must consider them; they were all part with Northrup and her.
“There is nothing for me to do but wait.” Mary-Clare seemed to hear herself speaking the words. “I can do nothing now but wait. But I will not fear the Truth.”
The bared Truth stood revealed; before it Mary-Clare did not flinch.
“This is what it has all meant. The happiness, the joy, the strange intensity of common things.”
Then Mary-Clare bowed her head upon her folded arms while the warm sunlight came into the doorway and lay full upon her. She was absorbed in something too big to comprehend. She felt as if she was being born into––a woman! The birth-pains were wrenching; she could not grasp anything beyond them, but she counted every one and gloried in it.
The Big Thing that poor Peneluna had known was claiming Mary-Clare. It could not be denied; it might be starved but it would not die.