Almost every evening, at the Maines', people came in--old Southern friends, living in New York, or here on business or other occasions, young men and women, fond of Rachel, acceptable fellow-sheep from the fold of St. Timothy, now and then the rector himself, now and then some young man, Southern, with a letter of introduction. Sometimes there were but one or two besides the family, sometimes seven or eight. There was little or no formal entertainment, but this kind of thing always. Each day at dusk Hagar put on one of the two half-festive gowns which, at the last moment, Miss Serena had insisted she must have. Both were simplicity itself, both of some soft, crêpy stuff, one dark bronze and one dark green. They were made with the large puffed sleeves of the period, and the throat slightly low and square. "Country-made, but somehow just right," Rachel judged. "You aren't any more adorned than the leaf of a tree, and yet you might walk, just as you are, into Cæsar's palace." Usually by half-past ten visitors were gone, lights downstairs were out. Powhatan and Bessie believed in early to bed and late to rise. Upstairs, in her bedroom on the third floor, Hagar shook out and hung in the closet the bronze or green dress, as the case might be, put on her gown and her red wrapper, braided her hair, pushed the couch well beneath the light, curled herself up on it under the eider-down quilt, and, tablet against knee, began to write.... The Short Story--it was that she dreamed and wrote and polished. Two currents of thought and aspiration ran side by side. "To earn money--to make my own living--to be able to help"; and "To make this Idea, that I think is beautiful, come forth and grow.--To get this thing right--to make this dream show clear--to do it, to do it!--To create!" The latter current was the most powerful. The former would sooner or later accomplish its end; it would turn the mill-wheel and be content. But the latter--never, never would it be satisfied; never would it say, "It is accomplished." Always there would be the further dream, always the necessity to make that, too, come clear. There were other currents, more or less strong, Desire of Fame, Desire to be Known, Desire to Excel, and others; but the first two were the great currents. Since March and the fairy story she had written other stories, four or five in all. She had sent them to magazines, and all but one had come back. That one she had sent immediately after her search for Thomasine. In a month she had word that it was taken, and that, on publication, she would be paid fifty dollars. The letter was like manna, she went about all day with a rapt face. To write--to write--to write stories like Hawthorne, like Poe....