In the year that had passed since Hendricks had left her sobbing in the chair on the porch of the Culpepper home, a current between them had been reestablished, and was fed by the chance passing in a store, a smile at a reception, a good morning on the street, and the current was pulsing through their veins night and day. But that fine September morning, as she stood on the veranda of her home with a dust-cap on her head, cleaning up the litter her parents had made in packing, she was not ready for what rushed into her soul from the letter Dolan left her, as he hurried away to overtake the band that was turning from Lincoln Avenue into Main Street. She sat in a chair to read it, and for a moment after she had read it, she held it open in her lap and gazed at the sunlight mottling the blue grass before her, through the elm trees. Her lips were parted and her eyes wide, and she breathed slowly. The tune the band was playing--McHurdie's song--sank into her memory there that day so that it always brought back the mottled sunshine, the flowers blooming along the walk, and the song of a robin from a lilac bush near by. She folded the letter carefully, and put it inside her dress, and then moving mechanically, took it out and read it again:-- "MY DARLING, MY DARLING: There is no use struggling any more. You must come. I will meet you in the city at the morning train, the one that leaves the Ridge here at 2.35 A.M. We can go to the parks to-morrow and be alone and talk it all out, before the concert--and then--oh, Molly, core of my soul, heart of my heart, why should we ever come back! BOB." All that she could feel as she sat there motionless was a crashing "no." The thing seemed to drive her mad by its insistence--a horrible racking thing that all but shook her, and she chattered at it: "Why not? Why not? Why not?" But the "no" kept roaring through her mind, and as she heard the servant rattling the breakfast dishes in the house, the woman shivered out of sight and ran to her room. She fell on her knees to pray, but all she could pray was, "O God, O God, O God, help me!" and to that prayer, as she said it, the something in her heart kept gibbering, "Why not? Why not? Why not?" From an old box hidden in a closet opening out of her mother's room she took Bob Hendricks' picture,--the faded picture of a boy of twenty,--and holding it close to her breast, stared open-lipped into the heart of an elm tree-top. The whistle of the train brought her back to her real world. She rose and looked at herself in the mirror, at the unromantic face with its lines showing faintly around her eyes, grown quiet during the dozen years that had settled her fluffy hair into sedate waves. She smiled at the changes of the years and shook her head, and got a grip on her normal consciousness, and after putting away the picture and closing the box, she went downstairs to finish her work.