He could not have done looking at her. And even after we had closed in before them and had gone on with our talk about the tray of the trunk, I think that we were all conscious, as one is conscious of a light in the room, that to Delia and Abel had come again the immemorial wonder. When the library door opened and Madame Proudfit and Calliope came out, a little hush fell upon us, even though none but I knew what that interval held for Linda's mother. Her face was tranquil--indeed, I think it was almost as if its ancient fear had forever left it and had given place to the blessed relief of mere sorrow. She stood for a moment--looking at them all, and looking, as if she were thankful for their presence. Then she saw Abel and held out both hands. "Abel!" she said, "Abel! I had your letter in Lucerne. I meant to talk it over with you--but now I know, I know. You shall have your little chapel in the hills. We will build it together--you and I--for Linda." But then, because Abel turned joyously and naturally to Delia to share with her the tidings, Madame Proudfit looked at Delia too, and saw her eyes. And, "You and Delia and I," she added gently. On which, with the kindliest intent, the happiness of us all overflowed in speech about the common-place, the trivial, the irrelevant, and we all fell talking at once there in the hall, and told one another things which we knew perfectly already, and we listened, nodding, and laughed a great deal at nothing in the world--save that life is good. * * * * * We three walked home together in the afternoon sunshine--the man who, through all this time in Friendship, had been dear, and Calliope and I. I thought that Daphne Street had never looked so beautiful. The tulip beds on the lawns had been re-filled for summer, a touch of bonfire smoke hung in the air, Eppleby Holcomb was mending his picket gate, and over many magic thresholds of the cool walks were lintels of the boughs. Down town Abigail Arnold was laying cream puffs in the home bakery window; at the Helmans' Mis' Doctor Helman, wound in a shawl and a fascinator, was training her matrimony vine; the Liberty sisters had let out their chickens and, posted in a great triangle, were keeping them well within Liberty lawn confines; Doctor June was working in his garden and he waved his hat at us like a boy. ("It's a year ago now they give him his benefit," Calliope remembered; "ice-cream an' strawberries an' cake. An' every soul that come in he treated, one after another. An' when they got hold of him an' told him what that was doin' to the benefit box, he wanted to know whose benefit it was, anyway. An' he kep' on treatin' folks up to the last spoonful o' cream. He said he never had such a good time since he was born. I donno but he showed us _how_ to give a benefit, too.") We were crossing the lawn to Oldmoxon House when I said to Calliope what it had been decided that day that I should say:--