Beyond the window a Missouri tempest was rising. The girl, responsive
as a reed to the wind, sat down in a low chair, the subtle quiver of
consciousness intensified within her, and watched the lightning that
began to play over the hills, and the rain that began to beat through
the trees. Strangely enough, as she sat there, in the flashes she could
see little, but in the dark--a warm, wind-blown, sweet-smelling
dark--she saw several things. For one thing, she saw that, most
probably, she would never again in her life spend an evening with a
sixteen-to-one congressman. It had been a very tiresome evening. For
another thing, she saw that she was not going to Europe. Her father
needed her; or if he didn't he ought to. For a third thing, she saw
that, in some way, she was going to have to make her father like Bruce
Steering again. Then she saw the fourth thing. There had not been a
flash for some minutes. Seeing that fourth thing, in the intense dark,
she gave a trembling sigh, put one of her hands on top of the other on
her breast and pushed, as though she were pushing her heart down. Then
presently the pressure of her hands relaxed, her head dropped down until
her chin touched her fingers, and a great flush that was like a charge
from something electric surged through her.
"Oh," she cried, "oh, is it you! Have you come!" It was a triumphant,
shy, thrilling greeting to something, something that she had been
waiting for, born for. The dark grew intenser, sweeter, warmer. She
lifted her arms and held them out yearningly toward the Tigmore hills,
half-leaning out the window, catching the rain on her eager young face,
in her shining hair, on her broad low breast. "I am so glad of it!" she
panted, in a singing whisper, "I am so glad----" A great sheet of
lightning unrolled across the Tigmore hills and held steadily
magnificent for a moment, revealing everything to everybody, so it
seemed to Sally Madeira. She crept into bed shaking, ecstatic, afraid.
Next morning she made her toilet away from the mirror as much as was
possible, not being quite ready to face her whole found self as yet. But
before she went downstairs she crossed to the window and looked out at
the tumbling Tigmore line, a kissing sigh on her lips.
When she reached the dining room she found that Madeira had not yet
come down, so she walked out into the garden, where she stood for a
little while by the vine-covered stump, her eyes closed, her little
straight nose in the air, the broad daylight beating down on her. Then
presently she opened her eyes determinedly. "Yes, I can stand it," she
said, as though she had been afraid that she couldn't, and looked
straight up into the rain of light over-head. "I can stand it, in the
daytime as in the dark, from now on forever."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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