Bruce had never before worked so hard; Freeman said that the designer of the Parthenon had been a loafer in comparison. After a long and laborious day he would drive to the Freemans with questions about his designs for the memorial that he feared to sleep on. Dale remarked to her husband that it was inspiring to see a young man of Bruce’s fine talent and enthusiasm engrossed upon a task and at the same time in love--an invincible combination. Carroll had kept in mind the visit to Laconia he had proposed and they made a week-end excursion of it in May. Bruce was glad of the chance to inspect the site of the memorial, and happier than he had expected to be in meeting old friends. It was disclosed that Carroll’s interest in Bruce’s cousin was not quite so incidental as he had pretended. Mills’s secretary had within the year several times visited Laconia, an indication that he was not breaking his heart over Leila. Bruce stole away from the hotel on Sunday morning to visit his mother’s grave. She had lived so constantly in his thoughts that it seemed strange that she could be lying in the quiet cemetery beside John Storrs. There was something of greatness in her or she would never have risked the loss of his respect and affection. She had trusted him, confident of his magnanimity and love. Strange that in that small town, with its brave little flourish of prosperity, she had lived all those years with that secret in her heart, perhaps with that old passion tormenting her to the end. She had not been afraid of him, had not feared that he would despise her. “O soul of fire within a woman’s clay”--this line from a fugitive poem he had chanced upon in a newspaper expressed her. On his way into town he passed the old home, resenting the presence of the new owner, who could not know what manner of woman had dwelt there, sanctified its walls, given grace to the garden where the sun-dial and the flower beds still spoke of her.... Millicent was like Marian. Very precious had grown this thought, of the spiritual kinship of his mother and Millicent.