Jan-an rose stiffly and shuffled to the door, unlocked it, and went into the blackness outside. Then Northrup sat down and prepared to wait. The stove was rusty and cold, but Rivers had evidently had a huge fire on the hearth during the day. Now that he noticed, Northrup saw that there were scraps of burned paper fluttering like wings of evil omens stricken in their flight. He went over to the hearth, poked the ashes, and discovered life. He laid on wood, slowly feeding the hungry sparks, then he took his old place by the table, blew out the light of the lamp and in the dark room, shot by the flares of the igniting logs, he resigned himself to what lay before. Rivers might return with Maclin. This was a new possibility and disconcerting; still it must be met. "I may kill a flock of birds by one interview," Northrup grimly thought and then drifted off on Maclin's trail. The ever-recurring wonder about the Point was intensified; he must leave that still in doubt. "I'll get the damned thing in my own control, if I can," he concluded at length. "Buy it up for safety; keep still about it and watch how Maclin reacts when he knocks against the fact, eventually. That will make things safe for the present." But to own the Point meant to hold on to King's Forest just when he had decided to turn from it forever--after setting Mary-Clare free. The sense of a spiritual overlord for an instant daunted Northrup. It was humiliating to realize how he had been treading, all along, one course while believing he was going another. And then--it was close upon midnight and vitality ran sluggish--Northrup became part of one of those curious mental experiences that go far to prove how narrow the boundary is that lies between the things we understand and those that are yet to be understood. For some moments--or was it hours?--Northrup was not conscious of time or place; not even conscious of himself as a body; he seemed to be a condition, over which a contest of emotions swept. He was not asleep. He recalled later, that he had kept his eyes on the fire; had once attended to it, casting on a heavy log that dimmed its ferocious ardour. Where Jan-an had recently sat, struggling with her doubts and fears, Mary-Clare seemed to be. And yet it was not so much Mary-Clare, visually imagined, as that which had gone into the making of the woman.