Betty talked, a little, because silence became too significant. She felt a sense of danger, as though the personality, the individuality she had always cherished, were being dissolved in the gulf where she was sinking. But what she said, what Hollister replied, she could never afterward remember. Ruth ran to meet them with excited little screams of greeting. “Hoo-hoo, Daddy! Hoo-hoo, Betty! Oh, goody, goody!” Her sister was out of the sled and had the child in her arms almost before the horses had stopped. “You darling darling!” she cried. Buxom Bridget came to the door, all smiles of welcome. “And is it your own self at last, Betty mavourneen? It’s glad we are to see you this day.” Betty hugged her and murmured a request. “Better fix up the south bedroom for Mr. Hollister. He ought to rest at once. I’m kinda tired.” “Sure, an’ I’ll look after him. Don’t you worry your head about that. The room’s all ready.” The girl’s desire to question herself had to be postponed. She had reckoned without Ruth, who clung to her side until the child’s bedtime. Pleading fatigue, Betty retired immediately after her sister. She slipped into a négligée, let her dark hair down so that it fell a rippling cascade over her shoulders, and looked into the glass of her dressing-table that reflected a serious, lovely face of troubled youth. A queer fancy moved in her that this girl who returned her gaze was a stranger whom she was meeting for the first time. Did love play such tricks as this? Did it steal away self-confidence and leave one shy and gauche? She saw a pulse fluttering in the brown slender throat. That was odd too. Her nerves usually were steel-strong. She combed her hair, braided it, and put on a crêpe-de-chine nightgown. After the light was out and she was between the sheets, her thoughts settled to more orderly sequence. She could always think better in the dark, and just now she did not want to be distracted by any physical evidences of the disorder into which she had been flung. How could she ever have thought of marrying Justin? She had spent a good deal of time trying to decide calmly, without any agitation of the blood, whether she was in love with him. It was no longer necessary for her to puzzle over how a girl would know whether she cared for a man. She knew. It was something in nature, altogether outside of one’s self, that took hold of one without rhyme or reason and played havoc with dispassionate tranquillity; a devouring flame clean and pure, containing within itself all the potentialities of tragedy--of life, of death, of laughter, love and tears. And then, as is the way of healthy youth, in the midst of her puzzlement she was asleep--and with no lapse of time, as though a curtain had rolled up, she was opening her eyes to a new day.