"You will bless me with more reason," said Grace softly, "when Fran decides to go away. She'll tire of this house—I promise it. She'll go—just wait!—she'll go, as unceremoniously as she came. Leave it to me, Mr. Gregory." In her earnestness she started up, and then, as if to conceal her growing resolution, she walked swiftly to the window as if to hold her manuscript to the light. Gregory followed her.
"If she would only go!" he groaned. "Grace! Do you think you could?—
Yes, I will leave everything to you."
"She'll go," Grace repeated fixedly.
The window at which they stood overlooked the garden into which Fran had wheeled old Mrs. Jefferson.
Fran, speaking through the ear-trumpet with as much caution as deafness would tolerate, said, "Dear old lady, look up at the library window, if you please, for the muezzin has climbed his minaret to call to prayers."
Very little of this reached its destination—muezzin was in great danger of complicating matters, but the old lady caught "library window", and held it securely. She looked up. Hamilton Gregory and Grace Noir were standing at the tower window, to catch the last rays of the sun. The flag of truce between them was only a typewritten sheet of manuscript. Grace held the paper obliquely toward the west; Hamilton leaned nearer and, with his delicate white finger, pointed out a word. Grace nodded her head in gentle acquiescence.
"Amen," muttered Fran. "Now let everybody sing!"
The choir leader and his secretary vanished from sight.
"Just like the play in Hamlet," Fran said half-aloud. "And now that the inside play is over, I guess it's time for old Ham to be doing something."
Mrs. Jefferson gripped the arms of her wheel-chair and resumed her tale, as if she had not been interrupted. It was of no interest as a story, yet possessed a sentimental value from the fact that all the characters save the raconteur were dead, and possibly all but her forgotten. Fran loved to hear the old lady evoke the shades of long ago, shades who would never again assume even the palest manifestation to mortals, when this old lady had gone to join them.