Fran widened her fingers to push down the rebellious dress. "If I don't put leads on me," she said with contrition, "I'll be floating away. When I feel good, I always want to do something wrong—it's awfully dangerous for a person to feel good, I guess. Mrs. Gregory, you say I can belong to you,—when I think about that, I want to dance…I guess you hardly know what it means for Fran to belong to a person. You're going to find out. Come on," she shouted to Mrs. Jefferson, without using the trumpet—always a subtle compliment to those nearly stone-deaf, "I mustn't wheel myself about, so I'm going to wheel you."
As she passed with her charge into the garden, her mind was busy with thoughts of Grace Noir. Belonging to Mrs. Gregory naturally suggested getting rid of the secretary. It would be exceedingly difficult. "But two months ought to settle her," Fran mused.
In the meantime, Grace Noir and Gregory sat in the library, silently turning out an immense amount of work, feeding the hungry and consoling the weak with stroke of pen and click of typewriter. If conversation sometimes trickled across the dry expanse of statistical benevolence, it was never, on Grace's part, for pastime. Beneath her words was always an underflowing current, tugging at the listener to bear him away to her chosen haven. As an expert player of checkers knows his moves in advance, so her conversations, however brief, were built up with a unity of purpose which her consciousness of purest motives saved from artificiality.
"About this case, number one hundred forty-three," she said, looking up from her work as copyist, "the girl whose father wouldn't acknowledge her…"
"Write to the matron to give her good clothing and good schooling." He spoke softly. There prevailed an atmosphere of subtle tenderness; on this island—the library—blossomed love of mankind and devotion to lofty ideals. These two mariners found themselves ever surrounded by a sea of indifference; there was not a sail in sight. "It is a sadcase," he murmured.
"You think number one hundred forty-three a sad case?" she repeated, always, when possible, building her next step out of the material furnished by her companion. "But suppose she is an impostor. He says she's not his daughter, this number one hundred forty-three. Maybe she isn't. Would you call her conduct sad?"
Gregory took exquisite pleasure in arguing with Grace, because her serene assumption of "being in the right gave to her beautiful face a touch of the angelic. "I should call it impossible."
"Impossible? Do you think it's impossible that Fran's deceiving you?
How can you know that she is the daughter of your friend?"
He grew pale. Oh, if he could have denied Fran—if he could have joined Grace in declaring her an impostor! But she possessed proofs so irrefutable that safety lay in admitting her claim, lest she prove more than he had already admitted. "I know it, absolutely. She is the daughter of one who was my most—my most intimate friend."
Grace repeated with delicate reproof—"Your intimate friend!"