But when her moment came, a cruel thing happened. Something was wrong with the machine that was showing the picture. At just _that_ moment--of all the moments!--the worn-out film seemed to be going to pieces before her eyes. After the little dog came along, and just as Howie should come out from the cigar-store, there was a flash--a blur--a jumble of movements. It was like an earthquake--it looked like life ceasing to be life. "_No!_" she gasped under her breath. "_No!_" The people around her were saying things of a different sort. "Cut it!" "What you givin' us?" "Whoa, boy!" They laughed. _They_ didn't care. It got a little better; she could make out Howie bending down to fix the dog's muzzle--but it was all dancing crazily--and people were laughing. And then--then the miracle! It was on Howie's smile the picture steadied--that smile back over his shoulder after he had turned to go. And, as if to bring to rights what had been wrong, the smile was held, and it was as if Howie lingered, as if in leaving life he looked back over his shoulder and waited--waited for his smile to reach Laura. Out of the jumble and blur--out of the wrong and meaningless--Howie's beautiful steady smile _making it all right_. She could not have told how it happened. As Howie passed, she turned to the little girl beside her whose head was without support and, not waking her, supported the child's head against her own arm. And after she had done this--it was after she had done it that she began to know, as if doing it let down bars. Now she was knowing. She had wanted to push people aside and reach into the shadows for Howie. She began to see that it was not so she would reach him. It was in being as he had been--kind, caring--that she could have a sense of him near. Here was her chance--among the people she had thought stood between her and her chance. Howie had always cared for these people. On his way through the world with them he had always stopped to do the kind thing--as he stopped to make it right for the badly muzzled dog. Then there _was_ something for her to do in the world. She could do the kind things Howie would be doing if he were there! It would somehow--keep him. It would--fulfill him. Yes, fulfill him. Howie had made her more alive--warmer and kinder. If she became as she had been before--Howie would have failed. She moved so that the little girl who rested against her could rest the better. And as she did this--it was as if Howie had smiled. The one thing the picture had never given her--the sense that it was hers to keep--that stole through her now as the things come which we know we can never lose. For the first moment since she lost him, she had him. And all the people in that theater, and all the people in the world--_here_ was the truth! It cleared and righted as Howie's smile had righted the picture. In so far as she could come close to others she would come closer to him. THE HARBOR MASTER[12] By RICHARD MATTHEWS HALLET