Nothing would be real to her, nothing of value, unless so marked by his interest and his approval. And now she knew that even the world itself must become but a shadow, were he not living to make it real.
It was a fearfully hot day in town, and she waited until evening to go back to Spring Pond.
When she arrived, Mrs. Connor had a cablegram for her from Clive saying that he was sailing and would see her before the month ended.
Late into the night she looked for him in her crystal but could see nothing save a blue and tranquil sea and gulls flying, and always on the curved world's edge a far stain of smoke against the sky.
Her mother was in her room that night, seated near the window as though to keep the vigil that her daughter kept, brooding above the crystal.
It was Friday, the twenty-first, and a new moon. The starlight was magnificent in the August skies: once or twice meteors fell. But in the depths of her crystal she saw always a sunlit sea and a gull's wings flashing.
Toward morning when the world had grown its darkest and stillest, she went over to where her mother was sitting beside the window, and knelt down beside her chair.
And so in voiceless and tender communion she nestled close, her golden head resting against her mother's knees.