And at a window in the big house Helen Foraker sat on the floor looking into the summer night, ears closed to the music of the river and the talk of her pine trees. Words echoed in those ears, the words of that other girl, spoken that afternoon.
"I am going—to make way for you, Miss Foraker!" Bitter, stinging words, but they did not sting the memory. They stirred some remote thing in her heart, touched some hope, some impulse of which she had never until today been aware.
He had come as a little boy, he had changed, had grown up, and now another woman had made way for her. She raised her hands and looked at them in the dim light as though they were strange objects. They were strong and splendidly proportioned, but they were a bit rough, a bit red.
"Hers," she whispered, "were so small—so white—" She looked up quickly, lips parted, as though her words and what they indicated had frightened her.
