Now came the beginning of what was like a new era of life for Phoebe—an era in which, more keenly than ever before, she was to understand, and—to suffer. Up to now she had not by any means been indifferent to the things that touched her own existence. And how she had loved and hated, joyed and sorrowed, with her enthralling favorites of the screen! But the time was come when she was to awaken to depths and heights of feeling—depths and heights all the more strikingly contrasted because her imagination was film-trained; she was to regard herself as the central figure in a heart drama that seemed countless reels long.

And about her, who—with her mother away—who was to take counsel with her, to sympathize, even to guess one small part of all that which surged through her young heart?

It was the great pipe-organ in Uncle John’s church that had most to do with her sudden emotional awakening, with her realization that something really momentous had come into her life. Weeks before she had started to school at Miss Simpson’s, the church organ had moved her. In New York, at one of the great temples dedicated to moving-pictures, she had often listened to the boom of just such a glorious instrument—listened with calm interest and pleasure, her hand clasped lovingly in her mother’s. And the church organ had not failed to recall to her the theatre, and those sweet hours that, alas, she had never fully appreciated.

But the first Sunday following Genevieve Finnegan’s visit! The pipe-organ stirred her cruelly. It spoke her own tragedy—it told the story of her broken, bankrupt home.

She had gone to church meaning to sit up proudly in the Blair pew, to keep her chin high, and her lips smiling; to stand and sit and kneel with the greatest poise, so that those who cared to look would see!—particularly those who might be sitting directly behind her. But when the organ broke forth, filling the high, dim spaces, there swept over her a realization of the sadness and the finality of the ending of that New York life which had been so sweetly happy. And the young head drooped, the lashes glistened, the lips trembled pitifully.

Standing, she kept her look lowered. Kneeling, she prayed—but not “Oh, dear God” (as Uncle John had taught her); instinctively her silent prayer was addressed to her mother. “Oh, darling, darling!” she implored, her forehead against the backs of her small gloved hands. With inward sight she beheld the loved features, the yearned for arms, the comforting breast.

Then—remorse. Behind the adored figure, what was that other? The Christ? Yes. She had seen Him once. It was in a war picture. A soldier was dying, alone, in No Man’s Land. And suddenly, there by the side of the dying had appeared the One whose look of love and compassion had brought a smile to the face of the prostrate boy. She must not pray to her mother. She must pray to Him. “Oh, dear Jesus,” she plead, “give me back my mother! Oh, please give me my mother!”

Grandma, shifting upon her old knees, came nearer to Phoebe by a hand’s breadth. Grandma’s dress, of wool, and black, with pipings of grosgrain, had been made for her two years before. Faintly it smelled of moth-balls.

Phoebe shrank away.

That morning Uncle John’s sermon failed to bore her as usual. She had her thoughts. Only at first were they miserably unhappy. As Uncle John progressed, she fell to thinking of a plan: it had to do with her return to New York. The dear apartment was still there, even if Mother was West. Perhaps—undoubtedly!—Sally was still on hand, black and bland, devoted as ever, and full of her accustomed gaiety. Why should Phoebe stay in a town that treated her unkindly and gossiped about her mother? Why not go back to New York, the dear home, the fond servant and the enchanting “movies”?

But how could it be managed? She determined to ask her father.

“I will go! I will go! I will!” she promised herself. “I won’t stay here! I hate it! I hate it!”

She went out of the church with a face so pale that the blue veins stood forth on her white skin like tracings of ink. She remembered how screen actresses bore themselves when they were suffering—how wistful was their expression, how far-away was the look in their beautiful eyes. Phoebe bore herself like them, walking slowly, with uplifted countenance. And her pain was real.

In a way, Uncle Bob and her father spoiled the beauty of her keen pain. Arriving home, she found them on the sunny side of the house, tinkering with fish-lines. Her father had a can of worms, and he was adding to them by turning back the winter banking of sod from the clapboards. They welcomed her joyously, and coaxed little shrieks from her by holding out the worm-can. She changed her dress, and spent the long afternoon at her father’s heels. The paleness left her face. She consented to carry the worms, and a shoe-box filled with sandwiches.

But night brought back something of the sweet grief of the morning. Her father held her for an hour after supper, seated in a big chair by the sitting-room hearth. Her cheek against his breast, she longed to talk to him of her mother—of the plan that had occurred to her that morning; yet she dared not. He was not like Uncle Bob, plump and smiling and full of invitations to confidences: he was so quiet, and thoughtful, so sombre-eyed, even mysterious. She felt his mysteriousness most when she looked at his tight-closed lips, his set jaws. And she asked herself, Was he grieving as she was grieving, and was it about Mother?

She sat up in bed that night and read “St. Elmo”, thrilling over the portions that were full of expressions of love. For her heart was hungry for affection. When had she lacked protestations of it, with Mother near? And Sally had never failed to tell her that she was dear. Her father was not demonstrative—never had been. And now all these others! With the single exception of Uncle Bob did they ever say kind and tender things?

When her light was out, she lay thinking of “St. Elmo” and of moving-pictures in which children, or young and beautiful heroines, had been held dear beyond words. She repeated lines from the screen that seemed very sweet to her—one in particular: “Across the world he went, seeking her.”

She felt her life a failure—her fate unspeakably sad. She wept, her head in her arms. All sorts of pictures flashed themselves upon her brain. And she repeated certain Biblical lines and passages that she had heard of late, both at home and at Miss Simpson’s. Somehow just to say them over exalted her strangely. One was, “Whither thou goest I will go”; another, “He that watcheth over Israel neither slumbers nor sleeps.”

She slept at last, the tears on her cheeks. The pipe-organ had done it all—that and the slowly advancing vested choir. It had even made her forget, temporarily, her childish fear of the dark. For that particular Sunday night was the first night that she had ever gone to sleep without looking under the bed and into the clothes-closet.

The next morning, waking late, she wanted to stay where she was, with the shades drawn, and read “St. Elmo”, and think of sad things, and say beautiful lines, and enjoy more hours of sweet unhappiness. But voices called to her from below—Sophie’s, her father’s, Uncle Bob’s. She kissed her mother’s picture over and over while putting on her shoes and her dress, and combing her hair. When she went down to breakfast she was curiously unable to eat.

Doubtless one of the household’s grown-ups, or, perhaps, all of them, saw that something was wrong, for that morning, promptly on the stroke of nine, Phoebe had her first lesson at home. It was Uncle John who acted as tutor. He had her read to him, choosing “The Vicar of Wakefield”. As she went along, haltingly, he asked her the meaning of words, and had her shut the book on her forefinger while she spelled them. He gave her several sums to do, also, using the arithmetic that Genevieve Finnegan had brought home from Miss Simpson’s; and they spent an hour over the globe, revolving it, and hunting countries and oceans and mountain-chains. Phoebe knew far more about the world, and what it looked like, here and there, and its peoples, and animals, than she dared to admit to Uncle John. She knew because she had seen so many “travel pictures”.

That afternoon she spent in the vegetable garden with Sophie. The garden was at a far corner of the Blair grounds, well away from any house. And Phoebe saw that here was an opportunity to ask Sophie a few questions—the questions she shrank from asking anyone else.

“I know why Miss Simpson didn’t want me at school any more,” she said, by way of a beginning.

Sophie was pulling radishes. “Do y’?” she inquired. “Wasn’t it—er—because your father wasn’t payin’ her enough money?”

“You know it wasn’t,” declared Phoebe, bluntly. “You know she wanted me out because my mother is West, getting a divorce from my father.”

“My land!” marveled Sophie, sitting back and staring up. “How’d you ever guess?—Phoebe, you been listenin’!”

“Genevieve Finnegan,” said Phoebe, laconically.

“Oh, that little imp!”

“You knew all the time?”

Sophie went back to her garnering. “Oh, yes,” she admitted proudly. “I showed Miss Royal Highness Simpson in. And your Uncle John, he tried to bluff her—told her your mamma wasn’t well, and so forth. But she didn’t bluff.”

“She knew,” put in Phoebe, “because there was a piece in a New York paper.”

“Right y’ are! Well, she didn’t want talk in her school, she said; didn’t want her little girls, the angels, to even know there was such a thing as divorce in the whole world!”

“It’s in the movies,” reminded Phoebe. “The girls all know.”

“Course they do! And when she had somethin’ to say to the Judge, you betcha he told her what’s what!”

“Good for Uncle Bob!”

“He says to her, ‘Miss Simpson, Phoebe will not remain at your precious school’. And I showed her out the front door,”—this with a flourish of her arms, both hands coming to rest on her hips while she gave a toss of the tousled head.

Phoebe touched Sophie on the shoulder. “Is—is divorce why my mother sent me here?” she asked.

“Phoebe, if I tell y’ the truth——”

“But, then, maybe you don’t know either,” added Phoebe, adroitly, since she had learned that, with Sophie, the best method was to belittle Sophie’s knowledge, and thus strike at her pride.

“Maybe I don’t know!” cried Sophie, scornfully. “I guess I knew all about it before you ever showed up. Your paw brought you, young lady, without your mamma knowin’ that he planned to. Now!”

“Sophie!” It was Phoebe’s turn to sit back. She stared, aghast.

“Yes, ma’am. Your paw just naturally stole you.”

“But Mother’s telegram! It told me to come.”

“Yes? Well, your paw sent you that telegram.”

Phoebe did not speak for a minute. While things began to clear for her—the swift packing, the sudden departure from New York, the telegrams that had come, one after another, the fact that she had had no letters, nor been permitted to read those written her father. Stolen! By her father, from her mother!

“Why?” demanded Phoebe, suddenly; then, as Sophie glanced up, “Why did Daddy steal me?”

“Didn’t want you out there in a divorce town, I guess.”

“Oh. And why was I watched so, and never taken anywhere for a long time?”

“If I tell y’, you’ll never, never tell?”

“Never, never, never—cross my heart to die!”

“The folks here was afraid your mamma’d steal you back.”

Phoebe was appalled. She got up, and stood over Sophie, wavering a little, too shocked to speak.

“Phoebe!” comforted Sophie, reaching out her earth-stained hands. “Dear kiddie!”

“They—they don’t want me to be with Mother?—again?”

Quickly Sophie averted her eyes. “I wouldn’t say that,” she declared. “Why, no! Y’ see, it’s this way: two of ’em here thinks the same about it, dearie. Your grammaw and the Judge thinks a little girl is always best off when she’s with her mother. I heard the Judge say so, and his maw agreed. But your Uncle John——”

Phoebe drew in a long, trembling breath. Then, “I hate him!” she declared. “Because he hates my mother.”

“You spoke the truth that time,” continued Sophie. “He married your mamma to Mister Jim, but he didn’t like her—never. Oh, he’s all on your paw’s side.”

“You mean that Daddy——?”

“Your daddy don’t say what he thinks,” reminded Sophie. “But I guess your mamma done somethin’ that made him pretty mad.”

Phoebe longed to know what, to ask about it. Yet she shrank from having Sophie tell her anything that might be in the slightest degree against her mother.

“I don’t know what it was,” Sophie went on. “But it got so bad between ’em that there just had to be a split-up. Course your Uncle John’s dead against divorces, bein’ a minister. The ’Piscopal Church is like that. And I kinda believe your father thinks the same way. But your Uncle Bob and your grammaw say that if a married couple ain’t happy they oughta sep’rate, and be done with it, and not quarrel around where there’s a child.”

Phoebe knelt, and put a hand under Sophie’s chin. “Tell me:” she begged; “When Daddy and Mother are divorced, what do you think is going to happen to me?”

“We-e-ell,”—Sophie considered the question, pursing her mouth and blinking.

“Oh, now!” challenged Phoebe, impatiently. “What do they all say?”

“What do they know about your mamma’s plans?” Sophie retorted. “Maybe she’ll marry again.”

Phoebe threw back her head and laughed. “Marry again!” she cried. “My mother? She’d never do that! Never! She’ll come back. And I’ll live with her. I won’t stay here. Not one minute! Not——”

“Sh! Sh!” warned Sophie. “Don’t talk so loud. And just think over this: If your Maw don’t marry again, maybe Mister Jim won’t let you go back to her.”

“Why not?”

Sophie shook her head. “I don’t understand it myself,” she admitted. “Only I know that your Uncle Bob thinks there oughta be what he calls a reg’lar new home, with a husband in it to take care of your mamma.”

“Daddy would take care of Mother and me,” declared Phoebe, proudly. “I know Daddy.”

“But y’ see, after a divorce, your Daddy might want to be dead sure everything was right for you, and happy, and—and safe.”

“Safe!” repeated Phoebe, disdainful. “You don’t know New York. What could happen to me or Mother in our dear little apartment? Why, the whole thing—marrying again, and not being safe in New York—it’s just crazy!—Oh, Sophie, how long will it be before Mother is divorced? Oh, I hope it’s soon! Then I’ll have her! I’ll have her! Oh, Sophie!”

She gave Sophie a hug, and they promised each other not to breathe one word of their conversation.

“Don’t you see how much it’s like a movie?” Phoebe wanted to know. “Daddy steals me, then Mother tries to steal me back, then Nevada—why, it’s exactly like a movie. And a good movie!”

Sophie thought so too.