The gray days come and the bright days go,
With smiles and fears and tears.
But somewhere off o’er a clean sea’s track,
Each soul’s High Noon is due;
Be strong, dear heart, though the wait is hard;
Till then ... just dreams ... and You!
—“Nathaniel Forge.”
Madelaine read the fine-typed verses again and again. An inexplicable, constricted feeling tightened across her chest. Somehow the lines frightened her, as though a Voice had come from the void and whispered a promise close at her ear.
She finally creased the edges of the column neat and true. She tore away the ragged portions and folded the poem in her purse.
Who was Nathaniel Forge? Why should he write such a poem? She wondered. She saved the poem.