Cis visited Jeanette Lucas often; the two girls were strongly drawn to each other; their friendship deepened and grew. Jeanette had come out of her trial with a darkened outlook upon life. Cis had come out of her struggle and loss undismayed, strengthened, in a sense refreshed, reaping the reward of her choice. Although there were moments when a simple tune whistled by a boy in the street, a phrase, a half resemblance stabbed her with pain, yet Cis was able truthfully to tell Nan that she was happy. By temperament and will she was framed to look forward, not back. Her optimistic courage was inspiring to Jeanette; she grew fond of Cis and turned to her as to a tonic, a summons to do her best also. Nan was submerged in her house, in its master and little Matt. She paid Cis her old loving worship, raised to an incalculable degree by her reverence for Cis as for one who had given her proofs, but there was no time in any day to spare for anyone but Joe and Matt. Nan and Cis met in the baby more intimately, more frequently than in each other, outside this powerful little downy link. To her amazement, Cis discovered herself a baby worshiper; she had not known that she was a member of that order, in one of its highest degrees. Her godson was to her hardly less adorable than to his mother. She hung over him, absorbing his violet-scented, milky sweetness as the odor of a flower; brooding over the miracle of his tiny features, their curious twistings, the crooked smile of his sucked-in lips; the funny thrusts of his absurdities of hands, doubled into fists and taking her in the eye, or letting her mumble them with kisses that inclosed the wrinkles of his wrists, the blue-blue veins traced below the whiteness of the backs of those belligerent little hands. When he looked into her eyes and laughed aloud, clutching her wealth of hair, Cis was elated, humbled, flattered. In baby Matt she found a new joy that revealed her to herself; she knew now what she had renounced when she had gone out of that pretty apartment, leaving Rodney there amid the ruins of his hopes and hers. Not for an instant did she regret, turn back in thought upon her right course, but she understood the void which ached in her, and often the baby’s fine white tiny yoke was damp when his godmother raised her face from it, while he was gurgling with laughter because she had burrowed into his neck, tickling him. Cis boarded with Nan. “Of course you couldn’t so much as think of living anywhere else, as long as I have room for you and want you so dreadfully! Besides, there’s baby!” Nan had said, and there was nothing to bring against her brief, convincing arguments. “It isn’t as though I were going to be here permanently,” Cis said. “I think no one ought permanently to live with a married friend, but just till I go back to Beaconhite--or whatever I do next--I suppose it won’t be too hard on you, Mrs. Nan!”