When she reached the dining room she found that Madeira had not yet come down, so she walked out into the garden, where she stood for a little while by the vine-covered stump, her eyes closed, her little straight nose in the air, the broad daylight beating down on her. Then presently she opened her eyes determinedly. "Yes, I can stand it," she said, as though she had been afraid that she couldn't, and looked straight up into the rain of light over-head. "I can stand it, in the daytime as in the dark, from now on forever."
In the air was an autumn mellowness that had not been there the day before. It nipped, with a strong, winey flavour, as it went down. All around her lay drifts of petals, rain-beaten roses, ragged lilies. The storm had stolen the garden's glory. "To put it into my heart!" cried the girl, in her all-conquering joy. "Oh, you Garden of Dreams, you! See, my eyes are wide open, and this, this is better than dreams!"
She went back to the house with her arms full of the very last roses. "For now, I must go bring my father around," she said.
Madeira had had a bad night. He had not slept at all as far as he could tell. For hours he had had to lie on his bed and face the dark, with Bruce Grierson's letter under his pillow, licking out at his temples like a tongue of flame. But he had not taken the letter away all night long. "Let it burn," he had said. "Let it find out who's stronger, me or it. That's my way." All night long he had made plans, with his face set toward the dark. When he got to the dining room that morning he went to the window and stood there waiting for Sally, revolving one of the night's plans in his head, deciding with how much force to project it, how to hit the mark patly with it. "For I won't have him here at my house again," Madeira was telling himself there at the window. "God! I can't have him here." He caught at the vest pocket above his heart. His teeth were chattering. His daughter, with the roses in her arms, entered the room just then.
As long as she lived Sally Madeira never forgot the way the dining room looked that morning, as she came into it from the Garden of Dreams: the dull green wall spaces, broken by some of her beloved cool etchings, and by great walnut panels that deepened and toned and strengthened the room beautifully; the old walnut side-board that had been her mother's mother's; in the centre of the room the heavy round table, unlaid, snowy, waiting for her effective interference; Madeira, her big handsome father, idling by the window, his fine physical maturity cut out strongly against the light, his deep chest, his great height, his wide, well-featured face, his good clothes, the adaptability with which he wore them; and on beyond Madeira, outside the window, the satin green foliage of the pet magnolia tree. It was all finely satisfying. She had tried her hardest to kiss the foolish gladness out of her eyes and voice into the roses in her hands, but things grew so increasingly pleasant that all her endeavour went for nothing. As soon as her father saw her and heard her, he said:
"Well, Honey-love, are you as happy as that?"
She put her roses into an old blue bowl and went over to him, and he sat down in one of the big chairs by the window and drew her to his knee. Then they fell into a caressing habit of theirs, he with both arms about her body, she with both arms about his neck, half-choking him with tenderness, rumpling his thick hair with the tip of her chin. She looked as much mother as child like that.
"What a big girl you are, Pet!"
"I have a big excuse for it, Dad."
"But your mother, now, was little, Sally. My, yes, reckon that was why I loved her so. Such a little, little thing!"