* * * * *
It was a fearfully hot day in town, and she waited until evening to go
back to Spring Pond.
When she arrived, Mrs. Connor had a cablegram for her from Clive
saying that he was sailing and would see her before the month ended.
Late into the night she looked for him in her crystal but could see
nothing save a blue and tranquil sea and gulls flying, and always on
the curved world's edge a far stain of smoke against the sky.
Her mother was in her room that night, seated near the window as
though to keep the vigil that her daughter kept, brooding above the
crystal.
It was Friday, the twenty-first, and a new moon. The starlight was
magnificent in the August skies: once or twice meteors fell. But in
the depths of her crystal she saw always a sunlit sea and a gull's
wings flashing.
Toward morning when the world had grown its darkest and stillest, she
went over to where her mother was sitting beside the window, and knelt
down beside her chair.
And so in voiceless and tender communion she nestled close, her golden
head resting against her mother's knees.
Dawn found her there asleep beside an empty chair.