Here were the few rich leaves, fluttering lightly in the evening wind as they had fluttered in her dreaming vision of them! And now her heart fluttered with them, so much stranger than the dream itself was its incredible repetition.
There—just ahead—yes, surely! there was the same long finger of pale sunlight striking downward through the stripped trees! Presently she would pass beneath its touch, feeling it faintly warm upon her cheek—as she had felt it in her dream!
Afterwards would be the dusk. And then—what if dreams came true?
She was not afraid, but instinctively she drew nearer the boy beside her. "Ted," she breathed, in an awed whisper.
"Huh?" he asked, roused from his own silent well-being.
But she did not answer, and he strode cheerfully on without troubling himself to question her again. "What if dreams come true?" she was saying within herself, but she could not, after all, put the thought into words for Ted to scoff at.
And then, before she reached it, the finger of sunlight vanished and the dusk was upon her, not swiftly billowing, but slipping softly downward like a silken veil. She was not afraid, she told herself, but the dusk chilled her and she shivered.
After the dusk—if dreams came true!—would be— And then her heart seemed to stop its beating. For dim in the distance, but coming toward her through the trees, there walked a shadow. And even while she watched, it gathered shape and substance unto itself; it ceased to be a floating fragment of mist and became a woman!
But now Sheila's heart began to beat again—riotously. Her hesitations, her unacknowledged fears, were succeeded by a sense of exquisite exultation. The miracle was at hand—and she rushed upon it.
"Ted!" It was not a whisper this time, but a cry, and the boy turned sharply. But Sheila had already started forward, calling wildly: "Mother! Mother! Mother!"