Ruthita accompanied me to the end of the lane. She did not come further; she was grown up now and ashamed to be seen crying. At the last minute I wanted to tell her. I realized that she would understand--she was a woman. The knowledge came too late. She said she would write me at Oxford, and I did not correct her. I looked back as I went down the road and waved. I turned a corner; she was lost to sight. Next day I sailed. CHAPTER XIV--I GO TO SHEBA A sleepy, contented little town, overshadowed by giant elms, sprawled out along the banks of a winding river, surrounded for miles by undulating woodlands--that is how I remember Sheba. The houses were for the most part of timber, and nearly all of them were painted white. They sat each in its unfenced garden, comfortably separate from neighbors, with a green lawn flowing from the roadway all about it, and a nosegay of salvias, hollyhocks, and lavender, making cheerfulness beside the piazza. I suppose unkind things happened there, but they have left no mark on my memory. When I think of Sheba there comes to me the sound of bees humming, woodpeckers tapping, frogs croaking, and the sight of blue indolent smoke curling above quiet gables, butterflies sailing over flowers, a nodding team of oxen on a sunlit road hauling fagots into town and, after sunset hour, the indigo silence of dusk beneath orchards where apples are dropping and fireflies blink with the eyes of goblins. Sheba was one of those old New England towns from which the hurry of life has departed; it cared more for its traditions than for its future, and sat watching the present like a gray spectacled grandmother, pleased to be behind the times, with its worn hands folded. I arrived there with only a small sum of money and the price of my return passage. I had limited my funds purposely, so that I might not be tempted to prolong my visit. The day after my arrival my calculations were upset; I discovered that the Carpenter house was shut, and that Mr. and Mrs. Carpenter had not yet returned from the coast. This made me careful. I was unwilling to draw on my bank in London lest my whereabouts should be discovered, which would necessitate awkward explanations to my family and the association of Vi’s name with doubtful circumstances. In my search for cheap lodgings I had a strange stroke of luck. Randall Carpenter’s house stood in an old-world street, which at this time of the year was a tunnel through foliage. I waited until the gardeners had departed. Evening came; pushing open the gate, I entered the grounds.