Teresa’s bed was on the porch off the dining room. Miss Frazier took Lewis as far as the door and left him to go out alone. But Neil was there, sitting on the foot of Teresa’s bed. There was room for no more than Teresa’s narrow cot, her long chair, a table and one other little wicker chair. Yet Lewis, who had a penchant for spaciousness, had no sense of crowding here. On the contrary, he felt that coming onto Teresa’s little porch was like coming out onto deck at sea. The disused farmlands rolled wavelike away on every side, with no glimpse of dwelling or human being anywhere; all was soft, long sweep of meadow and field, climbing waves of woodland, and over all the flowing sky. Teresa’s cot stood against the outer edge of the porch, protected above by deep eaves. Over its head, a dark crucifix, tarnished silver, and about a foot high, was nailed against a supporting post.

Not a breath of change seemed to have passed over Teresa since that October day four years ago, when she had opened the door for Lewis in the Farwells’ Cambridge apartment. She was fresh and vivid, with smiles rippling to light in brown-gold eyes, and an unselfish, lovely mouth, molded by gaiety and humor. And her voice, exactly as Lewis had remembered it through the years, bore out the smile in her eyes. Yes, Teresa was still all of one piece—spirit and body one. Lewis saw an almost palpable bloom upon her—not the bloom of health, since she was emaciated and flushed with fever—but a bloom, all the same, of freshness and well-being.

Neil pushed the wicker chair a few inches nearer the side of the bed for Lewis’ benefit. Lewis, taking the chair, was moved by the effect the dark crucifix, bathed in afternoon light from New England earth and sky, produced on his mood. For, out of doors like this, superimposed against New England fields and sky, the crucifix threw new proportions, as it were, athwart Lewis’ concepts. It produced space for infinities and eternities of joyful well-being. Without analyzing it—indeed scarcely noting it—Lewis accepted the shifting of proportions, the touch of sweetness his passing glance at the cross had brought, with simple gratitude: an unuttered thank-you to the Savior.

Neil was saying, “I’ll be within call, Doctor, if you want anything.” As Neil spoke, he came around past Lewis’ shoulder and adjusted Teresa’s pillow, his arm for an instant back of it, under her shoulders. “Isn’t that better? Is it all right, Teresa?”

The look that passed between the boy and the girl then was one that Lewis charged his heart to remember. It was love, of course. And love between a man and a woman. Complete recognition of all that such love implies. Yet, although this recognition was no new thing with them, they had kissed each other only when both thought Teresa was dying, and in farewell. And beyond this, not even in farewell—since they were forewarned, having “fallen” once—their lips would never touch again this side of Paradise. Lewis knew. If Neil had not confided in him on the drive here, by silences and broken words, Lewis would still have seen the definiteness of their renunciation in the light of the smiling glance that had passed between them as Neil adjusted the pillow, and known that their love held no flaw of possible betrayal in it. These two were at peace with their Faith and everything of both agony and joy that it entailed for them. But this was not renunciation as religionless moralists think of it. It was simplicity, the simplicity of spiritual health.

When Neil had gone, leaving Lewis and the sick girl alone, Lewis was suddenly shy of Teresa. It was she who should measure his health, not he hers. For it is not the whole but the sick who need a physician. Yet he took Teresa’s wrist, lying there on her counterpane, and started counting her pulse.

Then Teresa laughed—putting him off, making him lose the count. “I thought you never made an examination without Janet to take down notes,” she protested. “She’s here, quite handy. Sha’n’t we call her?”

“No, thanks. This is an exception. I’ll remember well enough.” And indeed he would. Every word that Teresa gave him, as he asked it, of family history, the course of the development of her disease and the treatment it had had, was etched on his mind for all of life, he felt. He needed no filing card for Teresa. But neither had he needed her answers to his short, quick questions. When he came to it, the examination he gave her lungs told him that she was doomed.

After that examination he sat back, trying to smile at Teresa, trying to be natural. Wasn’t there something simple and of ordinary day that he could say? But he was shy of this girl as he had never been shy of any one in all this mortal world before. Shy but not ill at ease. It was good to be here, he felt. Simply that.

Teresa was smiling into his attempted smile. “Are you really all done?” she asked.

“I think so. The specialists will be more thorough, of course. But I know what to do now, what man we want for you.”

“But you will tell me what you think yourself, Doctor? How ill I am?” She put her hand under her pillow as she asked the brave question and kept it there. Lewis knew that she had found her rosary and was holding it. “They say—Neil and Doctor Clark—even Petra—that I must go away to a sanitarium somewhere. Leave Mary’s Field. But that won’t happen, will it? I can stay here. I needn’t leave Mary’s Field. Is that what you think?”

Lewis had no lies for Teresa. He would not lie to her by so much as a glance. She was fit for the truth. Perfectly fit. Had he ever been face to face with any one else so stripped, fit and ready for truth!

“There won’t be any question about that now. I’m sure of so much,” Lewis said. “We’ll keep you right here at Mary’s Field. And Petra will stay with you all the time. Move her things here. Make it her home. And Neil will be near.”

She was smiling. Her hand stayed under her pillow. But tears came to her eyes. Only two escaped, though: one down either cheek. She ignored them but Lewis wiped them away with his own handkerchief. “My blessed child,” he said. “You wanted to know. It is right that you should, I think.”

“Of course,” she answered. “And I knew that you would tell me. I am—very satisfied. It will be nice, not leaving Mary’s Field. Having Petra here all the time. Having Neil near. Will you tell them how things are with me? You won’t leave it for me to tell them?”

“Yes. Soon, I’ll tell them. But not to-night, I think. They aren’t like you, Teresa. It will go harder with them. They will need time—and your prayers. You must pray that they may be brave. Neil suspects already, I can tell you. But he still hopes. Petra has only a bewildered, vague fear. So Neil says, anyway. They needn’t be told yet.”

“But when the time comes, it will be you—not Neil, nor Janet—nobody else but you, Doctor Pryne,—who tells Petra? Unless it’s me. I may want to be the one to tell her in the end. But otherwise you? And you’ll take care of her?”

“Why do you say this? Petra is the dearest thing in life to me, Teresa. But I don’t know that that will help her. She doesn’t let me very close to her. Neil or Janet might be better.”

“Please tell her now, this afternoon, that she’s the dearest thing in life to you. She doesn’t dream it. She’s so silly and humble. She’s sweet. She told me, just a little while ago, before she took your pills like a good child and went away to sleep in the meadow, that Dick had showed you that letter she wrote to him at Mount Desert. She’s simply dying with humiliation over it. You see, it was you, Doctor, she meant in the letter, and she has no other thought but that you know it was. That you might guess wrong hasn’t even occurred to her. You did guess wrong, didn’t you?”

Lewis pushed back his chair. Got up. “Teresa, bless you. I wouldn’t believe any one but you—hardly Petra herself. It’s almost impossible to believe. But somehow—I can—I do believe that you know what you are saying.”

“You’re like Petra, I think. Humble and silly. But sweet.”

Neil, who for the last ten minutes or so had been pacing back and forth in the meadow, out of earshot and where Lewis did not see him, had started for the porch the minute Lewis moved back his chair. “All done?” he asked, coming up onto the porch and looking at Lewis for one swift, keen instant. Lewis nodded. “Yes and I want to see Petra. Is she still sleeping?”

“Oh, no. Janet kept her promise and woke her when you came. She’s in the kitchen, starting the supper. She and Janet—Teresa too—want you to stay for supper with us. Petra’s getting it started early on purpose, so you will. Janet’s gone across lots for an extra quart of milk just on the chance. You won’t disappoint us, Doctor?”

“First let me use the telephone. If McKinstry can come out this evening, I’ll want to wait and see him. That will make supping here very convenient. Don’t talk to this girl too much now. She should rest, Neil.”

Neil laughed. “I won’t talk at all then. One doesn’t, much, with Teresa. She’s the conversationalist of our Mary’s Field crowd. Have you told her to keep quiet, not talk?”

Lewis shook his head, smiling down into Teresa’s eyes. “No,” he said. “I haven’t told her anything. Given no orders. Teresa is wiser than all of us put together. She’s her own best physician.”

But in the end, Lewis merely stood thoughtful by the telephone in the passage for an instant, and turned away, toward the kitchen. McKinstry, immediately Lewis asked it, if he could be reached at all by telephone to-day, would be at Lewis’ disposal; and if he were out of town or not on the telephone, there would be some one else available who was good, too. But there was no hurry. Getting a trained nurse out to Mary’s Field was of far more immediate importance than getting a specialist. Miss Frazier would help Lewis with that, when she returned with the milk. Lewis himself couldn’t remember the name of that woman who had taken such excellent care of the little Nolan girl last month. But Miss Frazier, Janet, would remember. She would remember, too, how one could reach her. The woman should come to-night, of course. Sleep here. Or failing her, some one else whom Janet would recommend. He could wait for Janet for all that.

Lewis went on down the passage to the kitchen door. It was the kitchen, supposedly, since Neil had said that Petra was here, and here she was; but for Lewis it was no special place at all. It was merely Petra. He had come to where Petra was, at last. Come up with her. He felt as if he had been running a long time through dark eternities to this overtaking of his beloved. Between Petra and himself there now only remained a little space of thin, late afternoon light. Blessed light! He saw her through it as through thin glass—a pace away.

She was standing close up against an open window. Her back to it. She was looking at Lewis through the glass-thin radiant atmosphere. Then Lewis heard Teresa say, “Janet was careful not to disturb the chessmen, Neil. The board’s on the dining-room table. Shall we finish the game?”