She knew she would copy it in long hand, would go over every word of every sentence. The other side of her, the shy-eyed maiden of dreams who must be the wooed and not the wooer, would insist on deleting, trimming down, making colorless the swift and passionate staccato of the words. The letter she would send to Hollister would be pale and neutral compared to this cry of the heart she was uttering. The little glass-cased clock on her desk struck two. Betty was surprised. She had been here alone with her thoughts for four hours. The fire in the grate had died down and the room was beginning to chill. She gathered the live coals and put upon them two split lengths of resinous pine. For a few minutes she sat before the blaze warming her hands. That was the obvious reason for her staying. A more compelling one was that she saw pictures in the coals, dream pictures of the future in which two figures moved to the exclusion of all others. These had the texture of fiction, not consciously, but because our conceptions of the future must always be adjusted to a reality affected by environment and human character. Betty lifted her head and listened. What was that rushing, swishing sound? She rose, startled, affected instantly by a sense of insecurity and danger. Something crashed heavily against the wall. The floor seemed to weave. She went to the window and looked out into the darkness. A river, swift and turbid, was roaring past where the lawn had been a few minutes before. The girl stood terrified, her mind caught in the horror of unknown disaster. Even as she stood there, she saw that the waters were rising. Again there sounded a rending crash of timbers. Like a battering-ram the end of a telephone pole smashed through the side of the house, crossed the room, and came to rest in the fireplace. With it came a rush of water that covered the floor. Betty screamed. Her panicky heart beat wildly. Was the world coming to an end? She looked out again. What she saw was appalling--a swirl of rising waters tossing like the backs of cattle on a stampede. She noticed that the barn, plainly visible a few moments before, had vanished from sight. The sloshing tide in the room was rising. Already it reached the bottom of her skirts. There was no longer any doubt that the floor was tilting. The house had been swept from its foundations. Built of frame, it was tossing on the face of a rough sea. Betty waded to the stairway, climbing over the telephone pole. Except Ruth and the old colored woman Mandy there was nobody in the house with her. Both of these were sleeping on the second floor. In the bunkhouse were three men employed by her, but she realized that it, too, must have been carried away.