V
I
The girl beat with her hands against the door, whimpering softly as the steady concussions shook the whitewashed planks. The morning sunlight caught her by the shoulders in warm hands and seemed to shake her. She did not pause to listen for any approaching footsteps, but continued to hammer at the wood as though in a half-trance, and but semiconscious of what she was doing. White clouds ballooned upward in the bright blue sky and watched her from a distance. They were snowy-plumaged hawks observing the peregrinations of a lice-like humanity upon a rolling ball of earth and sea. The girl was a faraway mote to their farseeing eyes, a speck of dust without form or meaning. She moaned to herself and shook the door. Dreeme heard her thin voice so broken by suppressed and breathless sobs as he hurried downstairs, turned the key in the rusty grating lock, and flung the door open. She stumbled into the hall, her tear-streaked face lifted like the face of a wounded animal, and lurched against him with a sudden paralysis of knees, clinging tightly to his arm. Dreeme pushed the door shut and half-carried her along the hall to the little study.
“Why Deborah!” he cried. “What is it? Sit down. Shall I get you a glass of water?”
She refused to sit down, but continued to cling to him still whimpering. Her face was streaked with tears and dust, and her mouth shook convulsively. The pupils of her eyes were dilated, and she did not seem to see him.
“What is it?” he repeated. “What is it? You must tell me, you know. What has happened?”
She gazed about the little study in a vague manner, and for a moment appeared to strive for the mastery of her feelings. Her mouth opened and coherent speech seemed about to issue. Then she broke down completely and, relinquishing his arm, dropped to a chair beside the table upon which she buried her face. Dreeme, hearing her unrestrained sobs and noting the convulsive quiver of her pathetically small shoulders, realized that this was better than the stifled whimpering with which she had entered the room. She was giving full vent to her outraged nerves now, letting them run away with her until, tired and exhausted, they would once more be subject to her reason. The young doctor sat down calmly and waited.
Outside the morning moved on leisurely sun-shot feet through the cool lane. Sparkles of light caught at the flawed panes of the windows. In the sky the clouds hovered like white hawks. Birds chirped loudly in the ancient trees, and a creaking wagon drawn by a heavy-hoofed farm-horse protested its way toward the general store. Dreeme listened as the creaking axletree and softly-jingling harness grew fainter and finally died out. He heard the far caw of a crow as it sped in feathery darkness toward some field unguarded by an ungainly scarecrow. It was all peaceful and unvexed, a crystal tide of morning, a time for calmness and not tears. He waited patiently. He inspected the atrocious wallpaper that closed him in from the sun, and cleared his throat with dry humor. The wallpaper designer must have been a practical joker. Finding nothing better to do he drew his watch out and looked at it. The heavy, old-fashioned, silver-cased heirloom blandly announced that it was quarter past seven. He forced it back into his vest pocket, and stroked one freshly-shaven cheek meditatively. He had not slept so well. He … had been troubled by dreams. He thought of … no, he wouldn’t think of her now. Mrs. Slater would be along with his breakfast soon. He raised his eyes to the ceiling and waited. Flyspecks. Blackened rings of lamp smoke. It was cracked in the corner. That was where the mice nibbled and made little crackling noises during the night. Did they live on wood or plaster?
The girl lifted her head suddenly and pushed back her disheveled hair. Her eyes were like wet violets, a soaked blue so deep as to be astonishing. Dreeme smiled at her gently and said nothing. She looked at him in a surprised manner.
“I feel better,” she announced in a very small voice.
“I’m glad you do,” he replied. “Shall I get you a glass of water now?”
“Please,” she nodded.
When he came back with it she had wiped her tear-stained face with a small handkerchief, smoothed her hair, and brushed part of the dust from her gray dress. She drank the water in slow sips, gazing at him over the top of the tumbler. Dreeme leaned back in his chair and observed her. Curiously enough, although he had seen her but once before she was like an old acquaintance now. It was as though he were sitting in the room with what, in his New England, would be dubbed “family.” A tacit feeling of confidence established itself between them. Her intensely blue eyes, her misty bronze hair, her small mouth and nose, even her thin arms and slender wiry hands, were part and parcel of an old knowledge. It was pleasant to be like this while the mysterious white hawks in the sky hovered so far above them.
“I’m not like this generally,” she
