When Dorothy reached the gate she found it securely locked. She peered eagerly through the bars, hoping to see John. She tried to shake the heavy iron structure to assure herself that it could not be opened. "Ah, well," she sighed, "I suppose the reason love laughs at locksmiths is because he--or she--can climb." Then she climbed the gate and sprang to the ground on the Devonshire side of the wall. "What will John think when he sees me in this attire?" she said half aloud. "Malcolm's cloak serves but poorly to cover me, and I shall instead be covered with shame and confusion when John comes. I fear he will think I have disgraced myself." Then, with a sigh, "But necessity knows no raiment." She strode about near the gate for a few minutes, wishing that she were indeed a man, save for one fact: if she were not a woman, John would not love her, and, above all, she could not love John. The fact that she could and did love John appealed to Dorothy as the highest, sweetest privilege that Heaven or earth could offer to a human being. The sun had sunk in the west, and his faint parting glory was but dimly to be seen upon a few small clouds that floated above Overhaddon Hill. The moon was past its half; and the stars, still yellow and pale from the lingering glare of day, waited eagerly to give their twinkling help in lighting the night. The forest near the gate was dense, and withal the fading light of the sun and the dawning beams of the moon and stars, deep shadow enveloped Dorothy and all the scene about her. The girl was disappointed when she did not see Manners, but she was not vexed. There was but one person in all the world toward whom she held a patient, humble attitude--John. If he, in his greatness, goodness, and condescension, deigned to come and meet so poor a person as Dorothy Vernon, she would be thankful and happy; if he did not come, she would be sorrowful. His will was her will, and she would come again and again until she should find him waiting for her, and he should stoop to lift her into heaven. If there is a place in all the earth where red warm blood counts for its full value, it is in a pure woman's veins. Through self-fear it brings to her a proud reserve toward all mankind till the right one comes. Toward him it brings an eager humbleness that is the essence and the life of Heaven and of love. Poets may praise snowy women as they will, but the compelling woman is she of the warm blood. The snowy woman is the lifeless seed, the rainless cloud, the unmagnetic lodestone, the drossful iron. The great laws of nature affect her but passively. If there is aught in the saying of the ancients, "The best only in nature can survive," the day of her extermination will come. Fire is as chaste as snow, and infinitely more comforting.