“Thanks,” said Rodney again. “I’m done with Church, but I’m much obliged; you mean it well. I hope Cis will stay on; you’ll look after her. I don’t understand how she came to be here; I suppose you’re one of these befriending women. Good-bye. Tell Cis—No! What’s the use? You can’t send messages that do any good. I wish I could kiss her good-bye. She’s—she’s a wonder! Oh, good God, what’s the use? Good-bye, Miss Braithwaite.”
Rodney turned and dashed toward the door. He collided with the end of the bookcase nearest it, fell back, begged its pardon, and with a second dash was gone. Miss Braithwaite drew a long breath, and turned toward the fire, picking up the tongs to mend it, under the necessity of action; she was considerably disturbed.
“It’s most wearing to have love affairs, even by proxy,” she told herself. “He’s not without attraction, and I can see that he’s remarkably handsome when he has slept, and eaten, and shaved. Dear me, what a singular thing it is that with all the millions of people there are in the world one can become so vitally necessary to another that the loss of him—or her—is cataclysmic in effect! I wonder how the saints endure all the human disturbances unloaded upon them for their help! I find it exhausting. But then I have not died, and thus gained the larger point of view! And, furthermore, it’s barely possible that I’m not a saint! Now for my poor Cis! I can imagine her state with Rod downstairs and her polarized will holding her upstairs, forever separated, yet with but twenty-five feet between them!”
Miss Braithwaite went upstairs. She found Cis on her knees at the balustrade, her face pressed to the spindles, which her fingers tightly clasped.
It was a wet face that she raised to Miss Braithwaite, but she was glad to see it so; tears were healing.
“I heard his voice; I saw him go out, Miss Braithwaite! He will never come to me again! Oh, Miss Braithwaite, Miss Braithwaite!” Cis sobbed.
“Well, as to that,” began Miss Braithwaite in a customary formula of hers, as she lifted Cis gently to her feet and led her into her chamber, “I’m not so sure. You see, even though we live only about seventy years, it’s amazing the things that can happen in that time, things which we declared impossible! I have a notion that you may not be through with Rodney Moore, and his affairs, but I doubt that they will always mean to you as much as they do now. He behaved well, my dear—at the last! I’m bound to say that he seemed ready for personal violence upon me at first. He accepted your decision completely, quietly, and nicely. He told me to say to you that he was leaving Beaconhite, but may be reached through the main office of his firm in Chicago if ever he could serve you. And that is behaving prettily, my dear, and it is a real relief to us not to dread your meeting him. So now, my Cicely, will you go to bed and to sleep, resting peacefully on your knowledge that your fight is fought, your victory won, and that God is tenderly blessing your true heart with the love of His Heart?”
Miss Braithwaite left Cis on her pillow in her pretty room, ready to sleep from weariness, relaxed, as Miss Braithwaite had suggested to her, by the knowledge that this chapter in her life was closed.
At the foot of the stairs Miss Braithwaite met Mr. Anselm Lancaster, just coming to call upon her; they were great friends.
“You look tired, dear Miss Miriam,” he said at once as they shook hands. “Anything wrong?”