Sylvia had gone up the beach. Stanley Heath was asleep; and at last the delicious interval of solitude which the woman coveted was here.
The basket at her elbow overflowed with mending, but she had not yet taken up her needle.
Instead she sat motionless before the blaze, dreamily watching the vivid blues and greens as they flared up into the glow of the flame there to blend with its splendor, and afterwards melt into embers of scarlet and orange.
She could not work.
Try as she would, her mind wandered off into by-ways too fascinating to be resisted—by-ways which no matter how remote their windings, invariably led her back to Stanley Heath.
In retrospect she lived over again every incident, every word, every look that had passed between them until she came to the barrier of the unknown which her fancy bridged with intricate rainbow-hued imaginings.
While the fire crackled and flashes of sapphire and emerald shot up and died away, she twisted possible explanations this way and that and would contentedly have continued the pastime had not Eleazer Crocker knocked at the door.
Eleazer could not have chosen a more inopportune moment to drag her back to earth.
With a frown and a deep sigh, Marcia went reluctantly to let him in.
"Wal, now ain't it nice to find you by yourself!" was his greeting. "The kitchen looks cozy as can be. Spring may be comin' but for all that cool weather still hangs on. Where was you settin'?"