When her ireful mood had worn itself away, she got up with the stiffness of the mind's depression intensifying the body's chill, and made her way swiftly toward home. She walked fast, because it seemed to her she could not possibly bear to meet a neighbor. Even through the dusk her tell-tale basket would be visible, the dishes in it clinking to the tune that Mariana was no sort of a woman to marry. When she reached home, she fled up the path to the door, feeling at every step the friendliness of the way. The late fall flowers nodded kindly to her through the dark, and underfoot were the stones and hollows of the pathway familiar to her from a life's acquaintanceship. "My sakes," breathed Mariana. A man was sitting on her steps, and because Jake was so vividly present to her mind, she almost spoke his name. But it was only Cap'n Hanscom, rising as she neared him, and opening the door gallantly. "I says to myself, she'll be along in a minute or two," he told her. The cap'n had a soft voice touched here and there with whimsical tones. When he was absent, Mariana often thought how much she liked his voice; but whenever she saw him she consumed her friendly interest in wishing he wouldn't wear a beard. She was a fastidious woman, and a beard seemed to her untidy. "You stay here in the settin'-room," said she. "I'll get the lamp." She slipped through the kitchen into the pantry and put her basket softly down, lest he should hear that shameful clink. Even Cap'n Hanscom could not be allowed, she thought, to know she had been carrying pies to a man who would not marry her because she was not the kind of woman to marry. When she came back, bearing the shining lamp, the cap'n looked at her in a frank approval. Mariana was a round, pleasant body with pink cheeks, kindly eyes, and, bearing witness to her character, a determined mouth; but now she seemed to be enveloped by some transforming aura. Her auburn hair, touched with gray, had blown about her head in an unusual abandon, her cheeks were flaming, and her eyes had pin-points of light. She set the lamp down on the table with a steady hand and drew the shades. Then she became aware that the cap'n was looking at her. He had a fatherly gaze for everybody, the index of his extreme kindliness, but it had apparently been startled into some keener interest. "Well," said Mariana, and found that she was speaking irritably. "What's the matter? You look as if you never see anybody before." She and the cap'n had been schoolfellows, though he was older, and often she treated him with scanty ceremony; now, after she had tossed him that aged formula of banter, she laughed to soften it. But she was still unaccountably angry. "Well," said the cap'n slowly, "I dunno 's I ever did see just such a kind of a body before."