There was a mutual opening of arms and a head on Clytie's shoulder, wet eyes close in a corner that had once been the good woman's neck--and stifling sobs that seemed one moment to contract her body rigidly from head to foot--the next to leave it limp and falling. From the nursing shoulder she was helped to the bed, though she could not yet relax her arms from that desperate grip of Clytie's neck. Long she held her so, even after the fit of weeping passed, clasping her with arms in which there was almost a savage intensity--arms that locked themselves more fiercely at any little stirring of the prisoned one. At last, when she had lain quiet a long time, the grasp was suddenly loosened and Clytie was privileged to ease her aching neck and cramped shoulders. Then, even as she looked down, she heard from Nancy the measured soft breathing of sleep. She drew a curtain to shut out one last ray of light, and went softly from the room. Two hours later, as Clytemnestra attained ultimate perfection in the arrangement of four glass dishes of preserves and three varieties of cake upon her table--for she still kept to the sinfully complex fare of the good old simple days--Nancy came out. Clytie stood erect to peer anxiously over the lamp at her. "I'm all right--you were a dear to let me sleep. See how fresh I am." "You do look pearter, child--but you look different from when you came. My suz! you looked so excited and kind of young when I opened that door, it give me a start for a minute--I thought I'd woke out of a dream and you was a Miss in short skirts again. But now--let me see you closer." She came around the table, then continued: "Well, you look fresh and sweet and some rested, and you look old and reasonable again--I mean as old as you had ought to look. I never did know you to act that way before, child. My neck ain't got the crick out of it yet." "Poor old Clytie--but you see yesterday all day I felt queer--very queer, and wrought up, and last night I couldn't rest, and I lay awake and excited all night--and something seemed to give way when I saw you in the door. Of course it was nervousness, and I shall be all right now--" She looked up and saw Bernal staring at her--standing in the doorway of the big room, his face shading into the dusk back of him. She went to him with both hands out and he kissed her. "Is it Nance?" "I don't know--but it's really Bernal." "Clytie says you knew I had come." "Clytie must have misunderstood. No one even intimated such a thing. I came up to-day--I had to come--because--if I had known you were here, wouldn't I have brought Allan?" "Of course I was going to let you know, and come down in a few days--there was some business to do here. Dear old Allan! I'm aching to get a stranglehold on him!" "Yes--he'll be so glad--there's so much to say!" "I didn't know whom I should find here." "We've had Clytie look after both houses--sometimes we've rented mine--and almost every summer we've come here."