Then suddenly she and he were transported from the bewildering city, talking in its sleep, to the sweet, fresh dimness of the Kenmore Green, where the steamer had left them. It was early, very early morning, not more than four o'clock, and the stars were bright and the hemlocks black, and the red rocks looked soft in the shadows, like pillows. And over the Green, loping and inquisitive, came Sandy McAdam's dog, Bounder. How natural and restful the scene was! Then it was Jerry-Jo, not Priscilla, who was leading. The half-breed with a gesture of friendliness was beckoning her on toward the mossy wood path leading to Lonely Farm. There was a definiteness about the slouching figure that forbade any pause at the White Fish Lodge or the master's dark and silent house. Priscilla longed to stop, but she hastened on, feeling a need for hurry.
Presently she saw the little house, her father's house, and there was a light shining from the kitchen window. Jerry-Jo, still preceding her, tapped on the outer door, but when the door fell open Jerry-Jo was gone! Alone, Priscilla confronted her father, and saw with surprise that he evidently expected her. While the look of hatred and doubt still rested in his eyes, there was also a look of dumb pity. No word was spoken. Nathaniel merely stepped aside and closed the door behind her. Then she began a strange, breathless hunt for something which, at first, she could not call by name; it evaded and eluded her. Something was missing; something she wanted desperately; but the rooms were horribly dark and lonely, and the stillness hurt her more and more.
At last she came back to her father and the warm, lighted kitchen.
"I cannot find—my mother," she said, and the reality set her trembling.
"Your—mother? I—I cannot find her, either. I thought she—followed you!"
Cold and shivering, Priscilla sat up in bed. Her teeth chattered and there were tears on her cheeks. They did not seem like her own tears. It was as if some one, bending over her, had let them fall from eyes seeking to find her in the dark.
"Mother!" moaned Priscilla, and with the word a yearning and craving for her mother filled every sense. By a magic that the divine only controls, poor Theodora Glenn in that moment was transformed and radiantly crowned with the motherhood she had so impotently striven to achieve in her narrowed, blighted life. The suffering of maternity, its denials and relinquishings she had experienced, but never its joy of realization, unless, as her spirit passed from the Place Beyond the Winds to its Home, it paused beside the little, narrow, white bed upon which Priscilla lay, and caught that name "Mother!" spoken with a sudden inspiration of understanding.
And that night, with only her grim husband and Long Jean beside her, Theodora escaped the bondage of life.
After the strange dream, Priscilla, awed and trembling, walked to the wide open window of her room. For some moments she stood there breathing fast and hard while the cruel clutch of superstition hurt and held her.
"Something has happened," she faltered, leaning upon the casement and looking down into the silent street, for the restless city had at last fallen to sleep. "Something in Kenmore!"