The End of the Story

THE matron’s letter had said that a carriage would be waiting at St. Alban’s station. But at a glance, as she stepped from the train, Miss Whitman saw that it was not there. She stood for a moment in indecision on the platform, nervously gathering her soft black skirts about her, and hoping, in a sudden rush of shame that thrilled her all the more sharply for its very foolishness, that none of the few persons standing beneath the shed had recognized in her a new inmate for the Old Ladies’ Home on the hill. The swift, cold drizzle of a snow-threatening rain penetrated her veil; she shivered, stepping uncertainly toward the station doorway.

The waiting-room was empty — she was glad of that. Only the blue-capped head of the station-agent peered at her for a moment, in glimpsing unconcern, through the little cage-like window of the ticket-office. She crossed the room, gasping a little at the warm, fetid air, and took up her station, rigidly, before the farthest window. Straight before her, dim through the rivuleted panes, stretched the long vista of the hill road. She fixed her eyes upon its horizon with strained expectancy.

Now that the hour of ordeal had come, she wished, fiercely, for the culminating moment and its swift passing. The culminating moment, she supposed, would be that in which she actually stepped across the institutional threshold, when the doors barring her from further intercourse with the world of affairs and men had closed in finality upon her. There shaped for her on the blurring panes a picture, a colorless vision. She could almost feel, in the throes of her present imaginings, the depressing, lifeless monotony of that aged atmosphere, made maddening by the pressure of the forbidding walls which helped produce it; already, it seemed, as she probed with restless intent into her future, the cold lengths of the public corridors invited her endless tread; and everywhere — in her half-morbid thought she searched among them — bent nodding, gray-streaked heads, peered wrinkled visages.

The picture flung back at her tormentingly with grotesque detail. Her face stiffened. Her hands sought the hard edge of the windowsill and closed upon it tightly. Unknowingly and halfaloud she breathed her utter despair: “Dear — God!” The whisper, with its accompanying relief, brought a quick flush to her face. “ What a simpleton I am! and I so — old! ” She repeated the last phrase determinedly,trying to accustom herself to the new thought; for surely it had been but a few months before that she had held up her head with the rest, an independent wage-earner carrying her burden of work with capable hand and an eager heart. She marveled — would she ever cease to marvel! — at the abruptness of the transition. Providence, she reflected bitterly, in so turning up her calendar without warning, had dealt more severely with her than was her due.

She turned toward the bench against the wall, half-startled from her reverie by the sudden, noisy entrance of a rugged-faced mother who, stepping heavily across the room, deposited her sleeping child, with quick adjustment, across the seats — looking up with expectant gesture as she took her place beside it. But Miss Whitman drew in her skirts reservedly, turning her head away in nervous distaste as the other coughed tentat vely.

“ You — you waitin’ for the Old Ladies’ Stage ? ”

There was a certain quality of rough sympathy in the voice. Miss Whitman rebelled against her impulse to turn, to grasp the crumb of comfort. The other watched her pityingly, taking no offense at the stiff, uncompromising nod, “ I’ve heard,” she said, nodding her eager assurance, “ I’ve heard as how they sometimes have mighty good dinners up there, an’ some have rooms that are as pretty as a young girl’s. Mis’ Elihu Legg, my neighbor that was, was through the buildin’ onst. She says they stare at you as though they never seen a human bein’ before. An’ some of them are dreadful gossips, an’ some don’t talk at all; ” — she looked at Miss Whitman quizzically; — “ but she says that the most of them are real nice and sociable, considerin’. Are you — goin’ in on relatives ? ”

“ No.” Miss Whitman writhed.

The other sighed. “ It’s terrible without any kin o’ one’s own. On friends, I s’pose ? ”

“ No.” It was not a lie. She held her head stiffly erect. They were not friends — those who had induced her to take the step, who had made it so honorably possible for her to end her days comfortably in this sheltered retreat; who, grasping eagerly at this circumstance in her life, had taken it as a providential accident whereby they might, with pious satisfaction to themselves, relieve their consciences of a certain delicately shaded social debt which they had owed her for long years since. Miss Whitman fought against a slowly-rising spectre of dutiful gratitude. Not friends, — she began to draw a finely nice line of sharp distinction.

“ Not on friends! ” The torturing voice trilled with large amazement. “ Why, you don’t mean to say ” — again the roughly sympathetic quality quite dominated — “ you don’t mean to say that you ain’t got no — friends ? ”

“ I believe that — that’s just it! ” said Miss Whitman. This time she faced the other, her lips quiveringly parted into a smile.

“You poor thing — you poor thing! ” The phrase was softly muffled, and the woman sat quiet, pondering. Her hand wandered gently to the head of the sleeping child. She bent above it, crooning with clumsy tenderness. “ Janey, you wake up! train’s comin’, dearie! ” She stood before Miss Whitman in an embarrassed, unwonted silence, but the latter, to her own astonishment, held out her hand. “ Good-by.”

“ Good-by.” The handshake was sincere and hearty. “ An’ I hope they treat you right! I hope you’ll be real comfortable.”

When she had gone, Miss Whitman sat facing a clarified interval. She no longer questioned why. She dispassionately embraced the truth. For ah, to have no friends ! Here was the keynote to her real agony of shame. Beside the staring fact of her own utter friendlessness, the dreaded institution reared up in parallel mockery — a concrete symbol. She began to wonder, to question and compare, looking back upon her life and its large cycle of activities in bitter realization of its emptiness. But she had always — she weakly defended to herself — been so exultantly occupied with her work.

She recalled the many men and women she had met in the business world — how skillful she had been in the daily competitive touch-and-go with them, or in reservedly holding herself aloof when the need had risen. Oh, she had been an excellent woman of affairs; excellent, she pondered keenly—her employer had even condescended to “ use ” her beyond the usual age-limit (she had really “kept her age” well, she reflected). — How tired she had been at night! — seldom had she been able to use those brief spare hours for social intercourse with her fellow beings. And at the end — she recalled, with a shudder, her long, long illness, her terror at her rapidly-dwindling “ rainy-day ” fund. She wondered now at her impracticability in having made the fund so light. But — again she feebly defended — she had needed to live well, to keep constant to that always necessary “ appearance.” Besides, she had contributed largely to charities. And here she started — clutching at the memory; she had surely given thought, in the light of human kindliness, to her fellow beings, had attempted to bridge the gulf. But this pale memory, though she continued to dwell upon it for a moment in dim hope, still left her empty at heart.

Greedily, as she sat on the station bench, she passed in mental review all the years of her life’s story, searching for some gleam of happy social contact that would save her from her final condemnation of herself, fast-stripping each experience till the final hollow day flung back upon her. Ah then, the lucid cause was in herself—some curious aloofness, a lacking of some mysterious common quality which served to make men kin. She felt, of a sudden, as one detached, apart. She groped in terror —

The door opened noisily. Miss Whitman faced it dumbly. A man in liveried uniform came toward her.

“ You’ll need a light early to-night. I’m sorry your first day was so bad.” The matron, who had superintended the bringing up of Miss Whitman’s trunk, stood in the doorway, her capable, steady eyes inspecting keenly every detail of the new inmate’s personality. “ If there is anything you want,” she continued, “ anything you need, please let me know.” She glanced around the little room in satisfied decision. “ You ought to be comfortable here. I think that your trunk had better go in that other corner.” She paused, considering, her skirts rustling stiffly as she turned to go. “ You’ll find the rules beside your door in the corridor.”

Miss Whitman stood, immovable and quiet, when the matron had gone, a strange, dragging sense, as of some heavy anchorage, holding her for the first few minutes incapable of action. But when the personnel of the little room began to intrude upon her, she looked up, her eyes meeting this object and that with questioning intentness, scanning the homely appurtenances swiftly. The room was only saved from utter commonplaceness by two quaint dormer-windows which recessed cozily into the wall. “ I’m glad they face the east. I shall see the rising sun.” She framed the thought half in wonder; evidently old age was not to be without its few small pleasures of anticipation. The windows looked out over a low, narrow valley, she discovered, the near horizon being the smoothly undulating top of a bleak, brown-breasted hill.

Halfway up the hill — Miss Whitman absently followed the gray, ribbon-like path leading up to them — wms huddled a dense cluster of sturdy white cottages — little homes. She let her eyes fall hungrily upon one red-lighted window, striving to picture to herself the drawing close of the family ties at the approaching nightfall. There was going to be some comfort for her, she found, in this outlook from her windows. Even on this first day, rain-driving and dreary though it was, there was afforded her a glimpse into that outside world from which, she felt, she was already so utterly buried. The glimpse, at the first, would serve as a slowly-assuaging balm. As the hill grew dim beneath the fast-falling dark, Miss Whitman’s mind, tired almost to the point of emptiness though it was, returned with sensitive dread to her present condition, and to the coming ordeal of the first meal. She remembered what the matron had said about an early light. And at the sudden, clear resonance of a gong in the corridor without, she began in a sort of guilty, half-childish haste to search upon the little table for a possible box of matches. When she stood at last in the bright glare of the gaslight, she laughed through her panting, at her foolishness. “ Well — I am old! They usually get like that, I believe.”

She drew herself up, gasping bravely for composure, determining, at all costs, to hold to the last shreds of her previous dignity of independence. She was still standing motionless, an erect, slender figure with quiet eyes and half-smiling mouth, when her door, without preliminary knock, was suddenly flung open. An unabashed old woman, curiously attired in a heavily embroidered red waist, stood leaning on a crutch on the threshold, taking advantage of the other’s startled silence to flash her greedily inquisitive eyes from corner to corner of the room. At the last, they fastened with gelid penetration upon Miss Whitman’s own.

“ My! ain’t you got your bonnet off yet ? You came an hour ago, did n’t you ? Well ” — she hobbled across to the one easy-chair. “ I’ll wait for you. But you better hurry. She only allows me five minutes extry ’count o’ the tardiness o’ my crutch.”

“Is it — the dinner-hour?” The dread again upon her, Miss Whitman fumbled clumsily at her hair.

“ Ain’t you read the rules ? Did n’t she tell you? ’T is lucky I thought to stop in for you. I’m Mrs. William Sharp. I always stop in for the new ones if I like their looks. I saw you when you was comin’ in. You from the city?”

Miss Whitman nodded, starting impulsively for the door. The other hobbled after. “ You’re kind o’ young-lookin’ to be here so soon. My sakes! but your back is straight! How’d you keep it? ” Without waiting for an answer, she rambled on, the sharp tap-tap of her crutch making a clicking accompaniment to her voice. “ No, not that way,” she directed as they reached the foot of the stairs; “ we have to turn here — the dinin’room’s through that door. An’ if I was you”—she looked up, her eyes cunningly resentful—“if I was you I would n’t hold my head so stiff. It don’t exactly take here. They’ll talk.”

She held back the door for Miss Whitman, and as they passed down the long room together, the buzz of talk at the tables subsided into a tensely suspended hush. In spite of her aged conductor’s warning, the newcomer felt, as she ran the gauntlet of eagerly peering eyes, that she was holding her head up “ stiff.” To her relief, however, the hush was broken again, and old heads bending once more over their plates, even before she had taken the seat assigned.

“ See that sparklin’ old lady over there, — the one that’s always showin’ off her hands ? She was once a prom’nent actress on the stage. They say her hands was great! ” Miss Whitman glanced across the table to where a little old lady whose bright black eyes flashed vividly in her heavily wrinkled face was talking with vertiginous rapidity. Those around her. listening, were laughing and nodding in approval. “ An’ see that quiet one ? ” Mrs. Sharp went on — “ the one with the ear-trumpet at her side? That’s Mrs. 舒; ” the old voice whispered it excitedly. “You remember her? It was all about her in the papers. She had six husbands and five divorces! They say—“Miss Whitman lost the rest, so absorbed had she become in placing in her mind’s category of humanity this little world about her.

It was, indeed a world of a timbre peculiar to itself, a world in which, she swiftly concluded, the paramount interests, evidently, were tea, pedigree, and the latest stitch in capelines, these making stable points of common interest about which played a constant interchange of personal reminiscence and the lively, biting gossip of small daily occurrences in the Home. Snatches of sentences here and there, from the general drift of conversation, came to her: — “ Did you hear what the matron found out this morning? You did n’t? Old Mrs. Cassidy smokes in her room! Sh-h! Yes, a pipe! Is n’t it easy to trace some folks’ origin ? ” — “ That airish Miss White came down with a red bow in her cap this morning. Did you ever? Some folks would n’t know that they were in their dotage unless it was clubbed into them. Next thing you know, it ’ll be a red rose! Ha, ha, ha! a red rose! Why, even in my young days —”

Listening, watching, Miss Whitman’s heart grew heavy with foreboding. To be plunged — so swiftly — into this! She found herself presently, now reaching back again, wistfully, toward her busy, all-active life, now peering forward with fearful ease into the years ahead. Ah, it was such a simple chapter to read, that coming last one. Once again, she bitterly toyed with the pages, cowering beneath the prospect of her vast loneliness. For with these people, she felt, among whom the remaining years of her life were destined to be cast, the difficult adjustment of the measures of friendliness would require even more of a nicety than had been called for in the outside world. Apprehensively, in her tense quiet as spectator, she glanced from face to face; at the same time almost envying them, these fellow women, with all the small and everlasting weaknesses which bound them each to each in the leveling camaraderie of sheer femininity.

“ Look — over there — at the end! ” Mrs. Sharp’s raucous voice and nudging elbow once again claimed her attention. " She’s just come in! — with the piles of snowy-white hair — all her own, too! That’s Mrs. Lucy Osborn, Lucy Sill that was; an’ — ain’t she the sweetest here? Ain’t she got the youngest eyes you ever saw ? ”

Startled, even as she looked Miss Whitman turned away abruptly. The “ young ” eyes, deeply blue, interested and penetrating, had flashed in swift and friendly glance upon her own. Once again she felt her neighbor’s elbow nudging, this time impatiently. “ Why, she smiled at you! ” Mrs. Sharp looked up indignantly. “Well —you’re the first that never smiled back at Lucy Sill!”

Miss Whitman flushed, stumbling forth her eager apology. “ Ah, but she is sweet, gentle-faced. Tell me about her. You knew her — before ? ”

“ Yes. There ain’t much story about her. It’s just her — herself makes up the story. I knew her in Lyndhaven when she was just a girl. My mother used to make her dresses. I used to carry them home to her.” She looked across the table, smiling reminiscently. “ But you must n’t think that she looked down on me. She treated me like a — friend. She was — she was — why, Lucy Sill was the friendliest human bein’ you’d want to meet. Ev’ry one liked her, loved her. An’ that’s what makes it so — queer ” — Mrs. Sharp’s wrinkled brows drew close in puzzled bewilderment — “ so queer that she’s here, you know, an’ that all those heaps o’ friends have died, an’ she the only one left an’ — here! Why, when I found’t was her, just after she come, I could o’ dropped my crutch an’ stood, I was so surprised. Well, we never dream when we’re young what’s goin’ to come to us when we get old. There, look at her now, talkin’ to that Miss White. Look at her face, all interested. That way of hers was what took so with folks when she was a girl. She’s never exactly lost it. She’s got such wonderful — manners! ” With effort, Miss Whitman broke away from her absorbed contemplation of the face opposite. “ And you say she was beautiful — then ? ”

Mrs. Sharp shook her head with decision. “No — not beautiful; but just like that — herself; an’ that same delicate lift to her head. She carried off the finest man in the county. Mr. Bob Osborn worshiped her. He died only a few years after they were married. I often wonder what he’d — think — if he could come upon her here. (Sh-h! am I talkin’ loud ?) See her eyes turn this way then — all smilin’ ? She caught his name.” The old lady fumbled clumsily with her knife, ill-hiding her shamefacedness at being caught. “ She knows I’m talkin’ about her — but nothin’ mean. She knows I would n’t. I can’t get over her bein’ here. I tell her so all the time. She laughs at me. Oh, she’s Lucy Sill, even if she has white hair. If ’t was her sister Martha now who was here — if she had lived ” — the old lady paused, her thin lips pressing together in one decisive white line; “ well, I could’ve understood her bein’ here. I did n’t like her. Not many folks did. She was all held-in, sort of, an’ silent, — stand-offish; an’ Lucy thought the worldan’-all of her. Some said that Martha thought the same o’ Lucy, too; but if she did,” she shrugged her shoulders unbelievingly, “ she never showed it. Martha died in the middlin’ twenties. An’ Lucy’s here! Now watch her, gettin’ up — the way she holds herself. She’s goin’ to the sun-room. They’re waitin’ for her. She plays the piano for us every Wednesday night.”

Old Mrs. Sharp was hurriedly folding her napkin. Miss Whitman awkwardly handed her her crutch, and slowly followed after as the grotesque little old woman led the way.

At the wide door of the sun-room where the lights fell warmly on huge green palms and nestling flower-boxes, Miss Whitman with shy adroitness stepped aside, seeking, on her usual impulse of reserve, the shadow in the passageway without. And when the little group had settled itself within, she watched it wonderingly, her eyes eagerly searching each withered face as the strains of music from the piano in the alcove vibrated softly through the room. She noted that one gray head, even at the first few notes, had already begun to nod. The others, sitting motionless, listened for the most part with spiritless, unresponding faces, — the reverie of age, so different from the reverie of youth, enfolding them, apparently, in a dull, uncaring apathy in which — Miss Whitman in difficulty decided 舒 was surely neither pleasure nor pain. But was this, in its innermost timbre, content?

In a swift revulsion of feeling she turned away, her hands clenching passionately in her sudden and overwhelming desire to escape— to be freed. When she reached the solitude of her dormerroom, she drew up a chair to the table, half-smiling, bitterly, in her self-commiseration at the weakness of her trembling body. She wondered how long it was going to take, this difficult readjustment, and where, eventually, the last casting of the swinging balances would place her. She looked shrinkingly about the quiet room which seemed so mockingly conscious of her presence and her mood. For a long time she sat there, immovable and stiff, in the chair beside the table, her chin sunk rigidly on her palms, her mind set grimly on her narrowly-margined future; from her past she was now learning to hold herself sternly aloof — her almost utter lack of those memories which are the solace of age terrifying her when she tried, in glimpsing hopelessness, to search for them. She grew more rigid in her reverie.

She thought, at first, that it was the light rain driving softly against the window that had roused her. Then, as she listened, tense in the silence, there came a gentle, imperative knock at the door. In her lonesomeness, Miss Whitman felt her heart leap intuitively: “ It’s that Mrs. Osborn — Lucy Sill.” But when, at her shortly ejaculated, half-rude invitation, the door swung softly open, and Mrs. Osborn’s friendly eyes were full upon her, she sat reserved and unapproachable, wordless before the other’s presence.

“I’ve — invited myself to tea if you will — have me.” Hesitant at first, halfsmiling, she interrogatively waited at the threshold; and then, as though in tactful interpretation of the ensuing pause, she stepped across the room, and in deliberative, unembarrassed grace made room on the little table for the tray she carried. “ I’ve invited the tea and the lady cakes too; they are —old-lady cakes. Will you have me ? ”

She looked back over her shoulder with a quaint, bird-like motion, her keen, compelling eyes searching the other’s face whimsically.

“ If — if you’ll have me! ” said Miss Whitman; in the unaccustomed atmosphere of intimate friendliness, she felt herself struggling for a footing.

The other laughed aloud. “ Oh, you are like her.” Then, cautiously, “ S-sh! ” — she tiptoed back to the door again, like a mischievous girl breaking the rules at a boarding-school, and turned the key in the lock. “ It is n’t exactly allowed, here, you know — this,” she explained, as she took her place opposite Miss Whitman. She leaned forward, scanning the other’s features in swift, eager inspection. “Yes, you are like her” —she nodded again, her wonderful crown of hair flashing beneath the light. “ I mean that you are like my sister — she died — my sister Martha. I noticed it downstairs. Something about your eyes and mouth, and Oh! that —‘If you’ll have me’!” She laughed again, holding her hearer breathless beneath her charm; “ that was Martha, too, never certain of her own likableness. We were great friends, Martha and I.”

She turned to the table, and Miss Whitman, fascinated, watched the delicate, finely-wrinkled hands, like masterpieces of rare old porcelain, as they manipulated the tray.

“ You take — two lumps ? ” She held the sugar-tongs poised. “ Martha did,” she coaxed convincingly.

“ Two.” Miss Whitman smiled shyly in return, unconsciously drawing her chair up closer.

“ This is old Mrs. Jessup’s favorite brand. Oh, don’t be frightened. I am not going to repeat that long dissertation we heard at dinner.” The corners of her mouth wrinkled humorously. Then she grew serious, her eyes dark with grave concern. “How do you like it here? That, I know, is an unfair question on the first day. But—how do you find it ? ”

“ I find it — hard.”

Mrs. Osborn mused upon the pause. “ But later, you know,” — her voice fell softly low in gentle, persuasive sympathy,

— “ it is n’t so bad; one gets used to it. And it’s an excellent school for human tolerance. Indeed, after the last twinge of the final readjustment is over ” — she settled back comfortably in her chair, making a little gesture of contentment, serene in its implied resignation. “ Believe me, life is sometimes very interesting here.” Her face grew vivid.

Miss Whitman watched her breathlessly. “ Oh, but you are different! You are — wonderful! ”

Mrs. Osborn shook her head. “ No, I’ve merely a sort of knack at living along. It was my Robert taught me. And here — the knack comes easily.” She leaned forward, her finger-tips tapping slowly together in convincing enumeration. “ You know, in spring, outdoors — it is delightful. Wild things all over the grounds. Down in the valley there it’s one wild tangle-garden, — violets and columbine, rock-pink and maidenhair,” — she paused, smiling — “ all sorts of gentle-growing things for slow old ladies. Besides, there is the live world — squirrels, little red chipmunks, birds. And they all like us. Oh, they are most flattering, I assure you! ”

She went on. As one athirst, Miss Whitman listened, her city-pent spirit becoming slowdy enthralled before the joy of the coming season, before the healthy good-cheerfulness of the other’s philosophy of life. And Mrs. Osborn was not over-reminiscent. That, perhaps, her listener decided, was partsecret of her youthful-like vitality of spirit. And as she talked, dwelling upon this phase and that phase of her present life with humorous sympathy and kindly interpretation, enlarging, with every disclosure, the perspective of the newcomer’s outlook, Miss Whitman found herself presently looking forward with her, unconsciously framing an eager question now and then, or disclosing, in the sweet freedom of this new intimacy, somewhat of her own frail hopes and fears.

At the final pause, before the other’s courteous, interrogative smile, she bent forward, her eyes intent and piteous upon her visitor’s face. “ Ah, if I could only — with these people — Mrs. Osborn, I’ve been all my life, in the midst of the crowd, so fearfully alone — without any — friend.” She brought out her confession with awkward intonation, her sallow cheeks flushing. “ Why, I did n’t know people could be so nice! ” She beamed with frank admiration upon her visitor.

Mrs. Osborn laughed, pleased. “ Well, it’s merely that — on your great highway, you somehow missed the pleasant little by-paths. Some do.” Then, as she rose to go, “But we’ve lots of faults, you know. Oh, you’ve a whole unexplored country before you here. Tomorrow ” — she looked about the bare walls of the room — “ I am coming in to help you ‘fix up.’ Your room needs homing ‘ somethin’ awful,’ as our friend, Mrs. Sharp, would say.”

Miss Whitman felt her cheeks tingling. “ I — did n’t bring many of my things. I did n’t seem to think — It did n’t seem any use. I have only a few books.”

“Ah, you kept your books!” The friendly eyes lighted, seeking the other’s shyly in a new recognition. A flash of mutual comprehension passed between them. “ Well, I shall come to-morrow to help you fix your books.”

She looked back, her head finely lifted, as in promise, from the doorway. But when at last she passed into the corridor without, there fell upon Miss Whitman a poignant, dream-like sense of unreality. Swiftly she opened the door, and peered into the dark hall, calling softly in a sudden, unreasoning terror. But when the other stood once more before her, she reproved herself, in shame, for her foolishness.

“I— I— Oh, I’m foolish,” she feebly explained. “ I wanted just to see you — to make sure ” —

Mrs. Osborn again held out her delicately assuring hands, pushing the other gently back into the room. “ My dear — why, you are all unstrung! You need rest. You need some one ‘ magerful ’ ” — she laughed —“ to order you about. It is n’t likely that I’ll leave just yet. We’ll maybe have long years together. Oh, my dear ” — She reached up her hands, placing them as in gentle benediction upon the other’s shoulder. They looked into each other’s life-tried eyes. Unconsciously, the knowledge of the dignity of their years caused their heads to lift to higher poise. A certain reverence fell upon them —

When Miss Whitman had turned out the light, she sat in quiet content by the window, smiling to herself in the dark, and watching, with musing absorption, the shadow-draperies shaping patterns to themselves upon the wall. There would be so much to talk about, to tell, to hear. “ Why, I’ve never talked like that to a woman. I’ve never had a woman—the real kind.”

The spell of Mrs, Osborn’s youthful eyes was still upon her. Well, it had come late, this discovery of the need of warm relationship, of kinship, with other human beings, but not for all her youth would she have given it up again. With mind alert, and on the strength of her first lesson, she began to read the letters of the established bond, flashing forward swiftly and without terror to the last Great Hour. When that should come — she breathed deeply, serene in her sure intuition — she would not be alone. That comforted her.