Surely God heard and made answer, for that night Mary-Clare’s Way turned back again toward the little yellow house.
When she was able, Aunt Polly insisted that she be moved to the inn.
“It will make less trouble all around and Peneluna will stay on.”
So they went to the inn, and the winter settled down upon the Forest and the Point and the mines. The lake was frozen and became a glittering highway; children skated; sleighs darted here and there. The world was shut away and things sank into the old grooves.
During her convalescence Mary-Clare had strange visionary moments. She seemed to be able at times to detach herself from her surroundings and, guided by almost forgotten words of Northrup’s, find herself––with him. And always he was alone. She never visualized his mother; she could, thank heaven, eliminate Kathryn.
She was alone with Northrup in a high place. They did not speak or touch each other––but they knew and were glad! There seemed to be mists below them, surrounding them; mists that now and then parted, and she and Northrup would eagerly try to––see things! Mary-Clare imagined herself in that high place as she did Northrup, a personality quite outside her own.
After awhile those moments took more definite shape and form. She and Northrup were trying to see their city in the mists; trying to create their city.
This became a thrilling mental exercise to Mary-Clare, 224 and in time she saw a city. Once or twice she almost felt him as she, that girl of her own creation, reached out to the man whom she loved; who loved her, but who knew, as she did, that love asks renunciation at times as well as acceptance if one were to keep––truth.
Presently Mary-Clare was able to walk in the sunshine and then she often went to the deserted chapel and sat silent for hours.
And there Maclin found her one day––a smiling, ingratiating Maclin. Maclin had been much disturbed by Larry’s abrupt and, up to the present, successful escape. Of course Maclin’s very one-track mind had at the hour of Rivers’s disappearance accounted for things in a primitive way. Northrup had bought Larry off! That was simple enough until Northrup himself disappeared.