If Rachel could have known this, it would have comforted her a little, but she had not even that small comfort as she sat brooding over the fire. This was the Thursday of the dinner at the Astrys' and Belhaven had reluctantly promised to go, for there were many reasons that made him careful of the conventionalities; Rachel had dined alone and early.
A big fire leaped in the old-fashioned chimney and there was a rich and luxurious glow of color and light; the heavy, crimson curtains were drawn over the windows, but it was storming outside, and she heard the sleet on the window-panes. The wind shouted under the old gables. Rachel went to a window and looked out; it was still light enough to discern the cedars beaten by the gale. An old hemlock near the house stretched spectral arms, sheeted in ice. The gray veil of fog and rain cloaked the long slope of the landscape, and she could not discover the distant city. It grew dark fast. She let the curtain fall across the sash again and went to the fire, stretching out both hands to the blaze with a shiver. A strange feeling of uneasiness stirred in her heart, some vague forewarning; delicate and floating like a tendril, it trembled back again into uncertainty.
She opened a book at random and began to read. It chanced to be a life of St. Francis of Assisi, exquisitely illuminated, that Belhaven had picked up for its artistic setting rather than its religious teachings, for he was something of a connoisseur in books.
Rachel turned the leaf.
"Never set an empty pot to boil on the fire, in hope that your neighbor will fill it!" ran the proverb.
She sighed. Had not Belhaven set his empty heart on the fire with the hope that she would fill it for him? And she had not. In this, then, Brother Giles understood the world; evidently he entertained no hope for the filling of the pot.
Rachel turned the page, her fingers trembling slightly.
"And they twain ate the pottage of flour by reason of his importunate charity. And they were refreshed much more by devotion than by the food."
"And they twain ate of the pottage—" and she and Belhaven had eaten of it to their despair. They had not been refreshed by devotion, they had eaten it of necessity; had she found the key at last? They had eaten the pottage and the taste of it was very bitter. Rachel leaned forward and looked into the fire, where the red embers fell and the flame continued to leap merrily.
"And they twain ate the pottage."