“Oh, I might—I might! and think if I had come too late—think if I hadn't come now!” Again her voice broke and still holding Hale's arm, she moved to her own door. She had to use both hands there, but before she let go, she said almost hysterically:
“It's so dark! You won't leave me, dear, if I let you go?”
For answer Hale locked his arms around her, and when the door opened, he went in ahead of her and pushed open the shutters. The low sun flooded the room and when Hale turned, June was looking with wild eyes from one thing to another in the room—her rocking-chair at a window, her sewing close by, a book on the table, her bed made up in the corner, her washstand of curly maple—the pitcher full of water and clean towels hanging from the rack. Hale had gotten out the things she had packed away and the room was just as she had always kept it. She rushed to him, weeping.
“It would have killed me,” she sobbed. “It would have killed me.” She strained him tightly to her—her wet face against his cheek: “Think—think—if I hadn't come now!” Then loosening herself she went all about the room with a caressing touch to everything, as though it were alive. The book was the volume of Keats he had given her—which had been loaned to Loretta before June went away.
“Oh, I wrote for it and wrote for it,” she said.
“I found it in the post-office,” said Hale, “and I understood.”
She went over to the bed.
“Oh,” she said with a happy laugh. “You've got one slip inside out,” and she whipped the pillow from its place, changed it, and turned down the edge of the covers in a triangle.
“That's the way I used to leave it,” she said shyly. Hale smiled.
“I never noticed that!” She turned to the bureau and pulled open a drawer. In there were white things with frills and blue ribbons—and she flushed.