Sheila, restless with this earth-magic, was standing at the garden gate one evening, when a young man came up and paused, smiling, before her. At first glance, and in the uncertain moonlight, she thought him a stranger, but a second look revealed his sturdy identity.
"Why, Ted!"
And Ted he was; a Ted grown to a fine, vigorous manliness—the manliness of a thoroughly healthy body and a cheerful, literal mind. It was obvious at once that there was not a subtlety in him; that, in his early maturity, he was of the same substantial quality that he had been as a child.
Sheila had not seen him for a long time—as time is measured at nineteen—for during his first year at college, his family had removed to Lexington, and neither they nor he had ever returned. But it seemed as natural to her to have him there as if they had parted only yesterday, as natural to have him, and as natural to admire him. She had admired him devoutly when she was a little girl, though she had sometimes had disconcerting glimpses of his limitations. And she admired him now. Instantly she felt that splendid, radiant materialism of his as a charm.
She walked up the path to the house at his side, in a flutter of girlish delight—all sex, all softness, the weaker, the submissive creature. So he had dominated her in the past—except in her rare, "queer" moments when the wings of her quick fancy had lifted her on some flight beyond his reach. Her wings did not lift her now, however; they were folded so meekly against her shoulders that they might as well not have been there at all.
They sat down on the veranda together, and a climbing rose shook down a shower of night fragrance upon them, and the moonlight streamed over their faces as if with the intent to glorify each to the other.
Mrs. Caldwell was playing whist at the house next door, so Sheila and Ted were there alone, save for the cook's tuneful presence in the kitchen. Her song floated out to them in her warm, caressing negro voice—"Weep no mo', my lady! Oh, weep no mo' to-day!" And suddenly Sheila felt that she would never weep again—life was such a joyous thing!
Ted sat on a step at her feet, and he leaned his head back against a pillar of the veranda as he talked. She noticed how crisp and strong his fair hair was, and the sense of his vitality weighed upon her like a compelling hand.
He was telling her what had brought him back. The editorship of the Shadyville Star, the town's semi-weekly paper—the editorship and part ownership in fact—was open to him, and, alert as ever, he was seizing the opportunity.
"It's a chance—a good chance—to go into the newspaper game as my own boss, or as part proprietor anyhow," he explained. "Mr. Orcutt is making the Star into a daily, and he wants a live man—a young man—to take charge of it. Father's let me have a couple of thousand dollars, and I've borrowed three thousand more, and I'm going in with Mr. Orcutt as a partner. It's a big thing for me if I can pull it through. And I will pull it through. I was editor of our college magazine, and I've worked on one or another of the Louisville papers every summer, so I know a little about the game—and I like it tremendously. Oh, I'll succeed all right!"