("Oh, the green gra.s.s!" chuckled Martin like a bird.

"n.o.body asked her you to begin a song, Master Pippin," quavered Jennifer.

"It was not the beginning of a song, Mistress Jennifer. It was the epilogue of a story."

"But the epilogue comes at the end of a story," said Jennifer.

"And hasn't my story come to its end?" said Martin.

Joscelyn: Ridiculous! oh, dear! there's no bearing with you. How CAN this be the end? How can it be, with him on one side of the door and her on the other?

Joyce: And her heart's breaking--you must make an end of that.

Jennifer: And you must tell us the end of the sh.e.l.l.

Jessica: And of the millstones.

Jane: What did he have in his box?

"Please," said little Joan, "tell us whether she ever found her boy again--oh, please tell us the end of her dreams."

"Do these things matter?" said Martin. "Hasn't he asked her to marry him?"

"But she said no," said Jennifer with tears in her eyes.

"Did she?" said Martin. "Who said so?"

"Master Pippin," said Joscelyn, and her voice shook with the agitation of her anger, "tell us immediately the things we want to know!"

"When, I wonder," said Martin, "will women cease to want to know little things more than big ones? However, I suppose they must be indulged in little things, lest--"

"Lest?" said little Joan.

"There is such a thing," said Martin, "as playing for safety.")

Well, then, my dear maids, when Helen ran out of his room she went to her own, and she threw herself on the bed and sobbed without weeping.

Because everything in her life seemed to have been taken away from her.

She lay there for a long time, and when she moved at last her head was so heavy that she took the pins from her hair to relieve herself of its weight. But still the pain weighed on her forehead, which burned on her cold fingers when she pressed them over her eyes, trying to think and find some gleam of hope among her despairing thoughts. And then she remembered that one thing at least was left her--her sh.e.l.l. During his illness she had never carried it to the millstones. It was as though his being there had been the only answer to her daily dreams, an answer that had failed them all the time. But now in spite of him she would try to find the old answers again. So she went once more to the millstones with her sh.e.l.l. And when she got there she held it so tightly to her heart that it marked her skin.

And the millstones had nothing to say. For the first time they refused to grind her corn.

Then Helen knew that she really had nothing left, and that the home-coming of the man had robbed her of her boy and of the child she had been. Nothing was left but the man and woman who had lost their youth. And the man had nothing to give the woman. Nothing but grat.i.tude and disillusion. And now a still bitterer thought came to her--the thought that the boy had had nothing to give the girl. For twenty years it had been the girl's illusion. The storms in her heart broke out. She put her face in her hands and wept like wild rain on the sea. She wept so violently that between her pa.s.sion and the speechless grinding of the stones she did not hear him coming. She only knew he was there when he put his arm round her.

"What is it, you silly thing?" said Peter.

She looked up at him through her hair that fell like a girl's in soft ma.s.ses on either side of her face. There was a change in him, but she didn't know then what it was. He had got into his clothes and made himself kempt. His beard was no longer rough, though his hair was still unruly across his forehead, and under it his gray-green eyes looked, half-anxious, half-smiling, into hers. His face was rather pale, and he was a little unsteady in his weakness. But the look in his eyes was the only thing she saw. It unlocked her speech at last.

"Oh, why did you come back?" she cried. "Why did you come back? If you had never come I should have kept my dream to the end of my life. But now even when you go I shall never get it again. You have destroyed what was not there."

He was silent for a moment, still keeping his arm round her. Then he said, "Look what's here." And he opened his hand and showed her his metal box without its lid; in it were the mummies of seven ears of corn. Some were only husks, but some had grain in them still.

She stared at them through her tears, and drew from her breast her hand with the sh.e.l.l in it. Suddenly her mouth quivered and she cried pa.s.sionately, "What's the use?" And she s.n.a.t.c.hed the old corn from him and flung it to the millstones with her sh.e.l.l. And the millstones ground them to eternal atoms....

"My boy! my boy! it was you over there in the tree!"

"Oh, child, you came at last in your blue gown!"

"Why didn't you call to me?"

"I'd no breath. I was spent. And I knew you'd seen me and would do your best."

"I'll never forget that sight of you in the tree, with your old jersey and your hair as red as ever."

"I shall always see your free young figure standing on the high bank against the sky."

"Oh, I was desperate."

"I wondered what you'd do. I knew you'd do something."

"I thought I'd never get across the water."

"Do you know what I thought as I saw you coming so bravely and so badly? I thought, I'll teach her to swim one day. Shall I, child?"

"I can't swim without you, my boy," she whispered.

"But you pretended not to know me!"

"I couldn't help it, it was such fun."

"How COULD you make fun of me then?"

"I always shall, you know."

"Oh, yes," she said, "do, always."

"What DID you think when you saw me in the tree? What did you see when you got there? Not what you expected."

"No. I saw twenty years come flying upon me, twenty years I'd forgotten all about. Because for me it has always been twenty years ago."

"And you expected to see a boy, and you saw a grizzled man."

"No," said Helen, her eyes shining with tears, "I expected to see a boy, and I saw a gray-haired woman. I've seen her ever since."