"He can't love me—really," she told herself fretfully, when conscience spoke more loudly than usual, reproaching her. "He has always known I am married—he would never be so silly as to fall in love with a married woman." Then she would shed bitter tears as she thought of the farce her marriage had been, and long with all her soul for someone to love her—not a boy, as young Atkins was, but a man to whom she could look up, a man who would see that the pathways ran as smoothly as possible for her tired feet.
Often the temptation came to her to write and ask Chris to come home. He had been away three weeks now, and she knew that Miss Chester was wondering about it all and worrying silently.
After all, she was his wife, and it was his duty to be with her! So 130 Marie argued sometimes, knowing all the time that she would rather die than ask anything of him which he would only grant unwillingly.
The big box of heather had arrived from Feathers, and as Marie buried her face in it and closed her eyes she seemed to breathe the keen mountain air that had swept it on the Scotch moors and feel the soft, springy turf beneath her feet.
Oh, to be there with Chris!—to pass the long hours of the fading summer days with him and be happy!
She wrote a little note to Feathers and thanked him.
"It was kind of you to think of me. I have never been to Scotland, but the smell of the heather seemed to show it to me as plainly as if I could really see it all. You have never found any white heather, I suppose? If you do, please send me a little piece for luck."
She had no real belief in luck—it had long since passed her by, she was sure—but a day or so later a tiny parcel arrived containing a little bunch of white heather, smelling strongly of cigarettes—for a cigarette box had been the only one Feathers could find in which to pack it.
He had got up with the dawn the day after her note reached him and searched the country for miles to find the thing for which she had asked him.
Marie slept with it under her pillow and carried it in her frock by day; a sort of shyness prevented her from showing it to Miss Chester, though once she asked her about it.