Her first thought, on the day following her interview with Margaret Moffatt, was to get to John Boswell, and, as she laughingly put it, pay off her debts!
Two hundred dollars and a full month's money from St. Albans! Gordon Moffatt certainly could not feel richer than she. And then the months ahead! Well—one could get dizzy on one's own heights. So Priscilla calmed herself by a day of strenuous shopping and looked forward to the evening with Boswell.
A dim drizzle set in late in the afternoon, and there was a chill in the air that penetrated sharply. The mist transformed everything, and, to tired, overexcited nerves, the real had a touch of the unreal. The park glistened: the tender new green on tree, bush, and grass looked as if it had just been polished, and the early flowers stood crisply on their young stalks.
At the point where once she had met poor Jerry-Jo McAlpin, Priscilla paused and was taken into control by memory and the long-ago Past. Quite unaccountably, she longed to have her mother, even her father, know of her wellbeing. Surely they would forgive everything if they knew just how things had turned out for her! She almost wished she had decided to go back to the In-Place before she started on her trip abroad. She could have made them understand about her and poor Jerry-Jo. Was old Jerry waiting and waiting? Something clutched Priscilla sharply. The loneliness and silence of the Place Beyond the Winds enfolded her like a compelling dream. How they could patiently wait, those home folks of hers! And how dear they suddenly became, now that she was going into the new life that promised her her Heart's Desire!
Then she decided: since she could not go to them she must write to Master Farwell, he had never answered her last letter, and beg him to tell them all about it. He would go, she felt sure, and, by some subtle magic, she seemed to see him passing along the red-rock road, his long-caped coat flapping in the soft wind, his hair blowing across his face, the dogs following sociably. He'd go first to old Jerry's, and then afterward, an hour, maybe, for it would be hard for Jerry McAlpin—he would go to Lonely Farm by way of the wood path that led by the shrine in the open place—was the skull still there with the long-dead grasses in its ears? It would be night, perhaps, when the master reached the farm; maybe the star would be shining over the hemlock——
At this point Priscilla paused and caught her breath sharply. She had come out of the park by the gateway opposite Boswell's apartment, and just ahead of her, across the street, was a thin, stooping figure with caped coat flapping in the rising wind, and hair blowing across a bent face.
"I—I am dreaming!" The words came brokenly. "I am bewitched!"
But with characteristic quickness of thought and action she put her doubt to the test. Running across the space between her and that slow-stepping figure she panted huskily:
"Master Farwell! Master Farwell!"
He turned and fixed his deep, haunting eyes upon her.