I never shall forget that night. I don't believe I slept at all. I don't know what time it was when I got up and, lighting my candle, sat down at my desk, shivering in my long white nightgown. I just sat and sat; and gazed and gazed; and thought and thought; and dropped, I remember, little drops of melted wax along my bare arm, as I turned over my problem in my mind. "If only I didn't actually have to marry him!" I said out loud and turned and sank again into troubled silence. I got up once and carried the candle close to the cold, glass-covered picture of my mother that hung over my bed. Why did she have to die so long ago? What would she say—she who was to have been my best friend—what would she say if she could turn that clear-cut profile around and let me look into her eyes? I didn't know. I hadn't been old enough to remember even her smile. Shouldn't a girl be glad on the night of her betrothal? Shouldn't there be ardent looks, passionate words, tender caresses for her to live through again in thought? Shouldn't she long for the sight of the man whom she had promised to marry? "What shall I do, Father?" I said out loud. "What shall I do?" But only my clock answered me with its steady, unintelligible tick. No one could help me—no one in the wide world. I asked them, and they couldn't. Even Edith Campbell had said, "you'll know"; but oh, I didn't, I didn't.
So that is why, near morning, I got up again, went to my desk, opened a little secret drawer, and took out a picture. The picture was the one I had bought in New York after I had seen Robert Dwinnell at the theatre in the afternoon. Of course it is silly and very absurd for a girl of my years to treasure a picture of an actor in a secret drawer in her desk. I can't help it. That picture had been my ideal for almost five years now. It wasn't the actor that I liked so much (for of course I have been told that actors aren't nice); it wasn't Robert Dwinnell himself I admired. It was simply the jolly look in his eyes and the way he had—I remembered it so well—of striding across the stage, sitting carelessly on the edge of a table and swinging one foot. It had just about torn the heart out of me to watch that man make love. He had a kind of lingering way with his hands, and with his eyes too, every time the heroine was in his presence. Even before he had proposed to her, I knew he adored her and afterward—oh, really I think Robert Dwinnell must have loved that actress off the stage as well as on. Dr. Maynard's hands had never lingered about my shoulders when he helped me on with a coat; he had never gazed at me eloquently across a crowded room; and even after I had promised to marry him he hadn't crushed me to him in any mad wave of joy. I gazed for a whole half-minute at Robert Dwinnell's picture. I forgot all my problems for a little while—I forgot everything in the memory of that man's image. Call it absurd if you want to, ridiculous and impossible, but when I raised my eyes at last and rose, clear as the day that was just breaking, bright as a new-born vision, I knew—I knew I couldn't marry just everyday, kind Dr. Maynard. It was just as if Robert Dwinnell had gotten up from out of that picture, walked over to me, taken my hand and said, "You must wait for some one like me." And I looked up and knew that I must. It was like a miracle, and I shall never forget the sudden trembling assurance in my heart, as I found my way to my desk and in the light of that lovely new morning, drew out a sheet of paper and wrote to Edith Campbell and told her I was ready to be friends. For suddenly, brought face to face with the thrilling image of the man of my dreams, I was ready to live with twenty Edith Campbells. Of course, of course, I couldn't marry Dr. Maynard, and with a little pang of regret or something like it in my heart, I finally wrote him this note:
"Dear Dr. Maynard,
The refugee has thought it all over very carefully and has decided to gather the pieces of her house together and rebuild on the same spot, like San Francisco."
Then I added, dropping all play and with something I knew to be pain:
"I can't do it, Dr. Maynard, I've tried and I can't. But you'll always be the very kindest man I know.
"Lucy Chenery Vars."
"Now if you don't come!" I said to the picture, and leaned forward and buried my head in my arms.
So that is how it happened that Dr. Maynard went away to Germany alone and I remained at home to fight my battle. It was a dull, grey morning that he sailed, some three weeks after that wakeful night of mine, and I was sitting alone in my room at precisely eleven o'clock—the sailing hour—trying to imagine Dr. Maynard down there in New York on the big, white-decked liner, waving good-bye in his Oxford grey overcoat.
I was wondering if the nicest, cheerfullest steamer letter I could write had reached him when suddenly Mary, the general-housework girl, pushed open my door and shoved in a long white box that had come by express. I opened it wonderingly and gasped at the big mass of fresh red roses that met my gaze. I lifted them into my arms. It was exactly as if the kindest man I know had thrown them to poor me upon the shore, just at the moment that the big boat was pulling out, and I had caught them safely in my arms. There was a little limp card that came with them. The stick had all come off the envelope and it fell out on the bed like a loose rose petal. I leaned and picked it up. The ink had begun to run a little as if the message had been written on blotting-paper, but I could make it out all right. The three little words brought burning tears to my eyes.
The card said: "For plucky San Francisco."