On the great sofa, her husband snored gently.
At midnight she rose and, poking the ashes of the fire, she said to Ellen, “It’s time we were all asleep. Lock up and I’ll get papa to bed.”
The transference of Mr. Tolliver from the sofa to his bed was nightly an operation lasting many minutes. When Ellen returned, her mother still stood by the sofa urging her husband gently to stir himself.
“Please, papa,” she said, “come along to bed. It’s after midnight.”
There was a series of final plaints and slowly the gentle Mr. Tolliver sat up, placed his feet on the floor, yawned and made his way sleepily to the stairway. The mother turned off the gas and the room suddenly was bathed in the warm, mellow glow of the dying fire. Ellen, breathing against the frozen window pane, cleared a tiny space to look out upon the world. It stretched before her, white and mysterious, beckoning and inscrutable. And suddenly she saw far down the street the figure of a cab drawn by a skinny horse which leaned black against the slanting snow within the halo of a distant street lamp.
The mother joined her, watching the cab for an instant and murmuring at length, “I wonder who it could be at this time of night.”
“I know,” said Ellen softly. “It’s Mr. Murdock. He was coming to-night on the express to stay with the Setons. He must have come on the same train with Lily.”
At the mention of Lily, her mother turned away. Ellen followed her and in the doorway Mrs. Tolliver halted abruptly and embraced her child, fiercely as if she would hold her thus forever. For an instant they clung together in the warm darkness and presently Mrs. Tolliver murmured, “Tell me, darling.... If you have any secrets, tell them to me. I’m your mother. Whatever happens to you happens to me.”
Ellen did not reply at once. For an instant she was silent, thoughtful. When at last she spoke, it was to say dully, “I haven’t any.” But the tears came suddenly into her blue eyes. She was lying, for she had her secrets. They were the secrets which youth finds it impossible to reveal because they are too precious. All the evening she had not been in the comfortable, firelit room. She had been far away in some vague and gigantic concert hall where people listened breathlessly while she made music that was moving and exquisite. The faces stretched out before her dimly in a half-light until in the farthest rows they were blurred and no longer distinguishable. And when she finished they cheered her and she had gone proudly off to return again and again as they crowded nearer to the great stage.
After the mother and daughter had climbed the creaking stairs, both lay awake for a long time, the one entangled in her wild and glowing dreams, the other terrified by the unseen thing which in her primitive way she divined with such certainty. It was not to be seen; she could not understand it, yet it was there menacing, impregnable.