“He took a bill out of his pocketbook and pushed it all mussed up into my hand. ‘You pay. I’m going,’ he said. I was dizzy. He hated even to look at me. He got up and walked out of the tearoom. I hadn’t poured the tea. The toast hadn’t been uncovered. I put the money down on my plate and walked out too. Walking to the door was like walking in the dark. I couldn’t see. Felt my way among the chairs. But when I got into the street the faintness went. I must have run, for I caught up with Prescott down the block. I took his arm. He jumped as if a leper had come and taken his arm, almost off the curb. But I got his hand. He hit me then, I think, and started to run. Whether there were other people on the street or not, I don’t know. Must have been, though. After a while, I saw a taxi driver looking at me funnily. He was drawn up by the curb. He said, ‘Buck up. It’s a great life, kid, if you don’t weaken.’ He was fine. I liked him. He took me to the station. “I bought a ticket for Northampton. But I was really headed for the Connecticut. I was crazy to get down to a place I know—a place he and I had often been—where the water is deep, and I could slide off into the blackness under the ice. I didn’t think of Mother or Glenn or Hugh or Grandam or Patty or any one. I didn’t even think about death. I only wanted to slip off under the ice. “But sometime, after a long time, you came, Ariel, like a picture on the air. You, and your green feather! I remembered how you had lost your father. I’d never taken it in before, but I did then, on the train. You had lost him and I had lost Prescott. And then for the first time I knew that I was crazy, and that my wanting to get into the black water was part of the craziness. But your green feather was not part of it. It was the other direction, away from craziness. I don’t understand about that. But it was the Connecticut for me, or to go where the green feather was. “So I came home on the first train. And now the craziness has gone.... Every word I’ve said to you, Ariel, has been driving it away. Just looking at you drives it away. But I don’t see where your feather comes in, do you? Is it still on your hat? Safe in the closet? There’s something—_deep_—about that, that I don’t see....” Again Ariel wiped the tears from Anne’s face; for although she had come back into occupation of her mentality, she was still almost beyond physical sensation, and did not even know she was crying. “Let’s say our prayers,” Ariel said. “That’s all we can do. I don’t understand about the green feather any more than you. But God is in it somewhere—and my darling father, for it’s father’s feather. Persis and Nicky think it’s a magic feather—but I guess there’s something better than magic about it now.... Deeper ... though we _don’t_ understand.” They knelt beside the bed. Chapter XVIII Anne was waked by Ariel putting the breakfast tray down on the bed beside her.