Mrs. Jenkins looked over at Mr. Jenkins the shop merchant and bard, and there was love and wonderment in her eyes. He was reclining in an arm-chair, his long legs stretched before him, his head at rest against the chair, his hands folded over his stomach, his eyes tight closed, his mouth wide open, his lips moving, and every once in a while his tongue quickly lapping his upper lip. Janny looked away and out of the windows to the meadows that rolled up into the mist like big grey waves; this was the act of composition, she knew, and too sacred even for her, his humbler half, to behold. But the misty uplands suggested overmuch of that unnamable something which, when she looked at her husband, made her wish to shut her eyes; for, might she not, Janny reasoned, see more than she ought to see of the divine spirit that moved behind those hills and behind the lips of Ariel Jenkins. So her thoughts slipped back into the living-room of Ty Mawr, while her eyes avoided the inspired contents of the arm-chair. She had been a bride and the envied mistress of Ty Mawr just two weeks; however, she was forty and matrimony was late for her, and Ariel Jenkins being forty-five, it was none too early for him. Janny felt her responsibilities keenly. Was she living up to them? She was at the mercantile centre of the village, her better half was not only a merchant but also a crowned poet, her house the most important in Glaslyn. And Glaslyn expected changes; Mrs. Parry Wynn the baker said so, Mrs. Gomer Roberts the tinman had prophesied, and Mrs. Jeezer Morris the minister had whispered to Betto Griffiths who had told Janny of these expectations, that she supposed, nay, she hoped Ariel Jenkins’s home with a woman in it would soon look like a God-fearing place and receive some improvements. Janny’s glance roved through the sitting-room. She had made a few alterations, but somehow in the half-light of dusk they seemed as nothing. What was the moving or replenishing of a taper holder, a fresh case for Ariel’s harp, a new cover for the table, or the addition of a few pleasant-faced china cats to a regimental mantelpiece,—indeed, she sadly asked herself, what were these changes in comparison with the unappointed something she was expected to accomplish as Mrs. Ariel Jenkins the shop? She was a stranger in Glaslyn, an intruder from a great outside world, and now she felt bewildered, lonely. Her eyes flitted to Ariel’s face for company.

“Dearie!”

There was no answer.

“Is it comin’, Ariel dear?”

“Aye,” he snapped.

Janny winced; she had never lived with genius, and, somehow, she thought it would be different. Her deep-blue eyes had a still look in them that suggested not only a long habit of self-repression but also perplexity, and sadness, too; there was appeal in every feature of her face,—an appeal made the more pathetic, perhaps, by the childlike lines of pale-gold curling hair about her forehead and tired eyes, and the delicate hollows beneath her cheek-bones, and the fragile sweetness of her mouth. It was a face in its soft bloom and delicacy, forever young and yet unforgettably weary. She straightened out her kirtle, and again her glance roved the room. There must be a clean hearth-brush, new muslin curtains for the casement; the stairway landing, where it turned by the front windows, even in the twilight looked shabby with the wear and tear of heavily-booted feet and clogs, the light from the oriel window above the landing shining through with bald ugliness upon the stairs. As she looked at the light Janny’s eyes dilated, her face flushed, and she leaned forward, gazing intently at the window. For the minute she had forgotten Ariel, but he, puff, puff, puff, with many sighs and yawns and much stretching of his long legs, was coming out of his inspired coma. His awakening look fell upon Janny there where she sat, her hands clasped in her lap, her shoulders tipped forward, her chin tilted upward, a circle of quiet light about her hair, her eyes intent upon the stairway window.

“Janny dear, what is it? What are ye lookin’ at?”

“Oh! na—aye, lad, I—I——”

“Well, well, Janny!”

“Ariel, I was thinkin’.”

“Aye, an’ ye were plannin’, too.”

He was thoroughly aroused now from his inspiration, and studying that object, woman, which through some twenty-five years he had sung and praised. Ariel’s eyes searched her; stanza, metre, rhyme, theme, were all forgotten, for he saw that Janny possessed a thought she had no intention of parting with to him. He glanced from her to the window upon which she had been looking so rapturously when he surprised her gaze. So far as he could see it was like any other stairway light in Glaslyn, except that it was oval instead of rectangular, and perhaps a little deeper than some, but otherwise precisely like scores he had seen. Then he called imagination to his aid, that imagination which had been the means of begetting shillings over the counter of his shop, which had won for him a comfortable income, and commercial success, as well as made him the foremost bard in his county. He peered through the window; what he beheld was a bit of dusky sky with a shadowy star seemingly behind it. He dismissed imagination and returned to the study of his bride. It was a whim probably; perhaps one of those unshaped thoughts, elemental, unspoken, to which women listen in their idle moments; indeed, it might even be some dreaming about him of which Janny in the shyness of their relation, still new, was too sensitive to speak. Gradually Ariel forgot the problem in his renewed consciousness of the charm of Janny, with her deep blue eyes, her childlike pale-gold hair, the delicate lines of her fragile face so different from the Welsh women of their village. Under his scrutiny Janny sat serenely with a more than wonted air of self-possession.

She interrupted him: “Ariel, ye’ve been to sea, dear?”

“Aye, when I was a lad.”

“Was it for long?”

“No, not long, two years sailin’ with cargoes between our coast and Ireland.”

“Did ye learn much of the ways of sailorfolk?”

“Aye, much.”

“Runnin’ up an’ down the ropes?”

“Aye, that, an’ more too.”

“Did ye learn tattooin’, dear?”

“Aye, the marks ye’ve seen on my arms an old salt taught me to do. The sailors were clever with the needle, sketchin’ as well as sewin’.”

“Do ye think ye could sketch a star now, Ariel, or have ye forgotten?”

Ariel laughed, partly with pleasure at this talk by the fire, partly from joy in the companionship.

“Aye, I’m thinkin’ I could, little lamb.”

He drew his chair closer to hers and saw her face brighten; it rested her to have him near her, and her thoughts sped back through all the years of loneliness and hunger for the things she could not have; she had a new consciousness of life and of being useful; it was not merely Ariel, it was the house, too, and what she could do to make it—Well, the word escaped her; anyway it was the house as well as Ariel, and it was lovely to think of what she could do for it while he made poetry and sold things in the shop.

“An’, Ariel, could ye sketch me an anchor an’ a bit of rope?”

“Aye, dearie, I could; ye know I could anyway, for I had drawin’ at the school in Carnarvon while I was an apprentice there.”

“Drawin’?”

“Aye, it was mam’s idea.”

Janny’s eyes grew large.

“Ariel, do ye—do ye—think ye could draw me a—a cat?”

Ariel took one look at Janny and burst into laughter; shop, poetry, everything was forgotten in his amusement at her childlike eagerness. Suddenly he stopped, for Janny’s face was quivering. Aye, he had forgotten, too, that this was no peasant-woman; his laughter seemed brutal.

“Janny, little lamb,” he said softly, drawing her head to him, “I could, dear, I’ll sketch all the cats ye want.”

Janny sighed comfortably, her head still upon his shoulder, the weariness easing away from her heart. She could do it now; it would make the greatest difference; Betto Griffiths and others should see that she was something more than a bit of porcelain in Ariel’s home, that she could do something more than merely oversee house-cleaning. Besides, it really was something more,—it was having an idea of her own, and that until Ariel rescued her she had never been allowed to have. She reached up and patted his face; even her gestures were incomprehensibly childlike. What she lacked in the passion of a woman she seemed to make up in the perfect trust of a child. Ariel, selfish with the selfishness of a man who has lived by himself and who had lived much in his own mind, thought now with a pang how lonely Janny must have been ever since she came to him; the appeal of her confidence touched the best that was in him, the protection that was his to give her, and some potential sense of fatherhood. Aye, he knew how tired she was after the life that lay behind her, and he gathered her into his arms, holding her there quietly while he talked.

“What shall it be, Janny? A star, an anchor, a bit of rope, an’ a cat, did ye say, dear?”

“Aye, a star, Ariel, please. I don’t think I want the anchor. The bit of rope would be nice, dear. An’ I’d like the cat.”

“An’ what are ye goin’ to do with these drawin’s, Janny? Are ye goin’ to hang them on the wall?”

“No, I’m not goin’ to do that.”

“Well, it’s just as well, dearie, for Betto Griffiths, an’ Mrs. Gomer Roberts the tinman, an’ Mrs. Parry Winn the baker, would be hauntin’ Ty Mawr. But what are ye goin’ to do with them, dearie?”

“Ariel, I couldn’t say now.” Janny stirred uneasily. “I might be hangin’ them in our bedroom, an’—an’—an’ I might be puttin’—puttin’ them in the—Bible to press. They’d be useful.”

“Aye, that’s so. An’ how large shall I draw them?”

Janny thought a minute.

“The cat, dear, I’d like about a foot long, that is from his tail to his whiskers—No, I’m thinkin’ that’s too narrow for the cat; from the tail to the whiskers I’d like him one foot an’ a half, Ariel.”

Janny’s glance took a flight over Ariel’s shoulder.

“An’ the star?”

Janny thought again.

“Six inches from point to point, an’ four stars—no—one star will do—I can cut—och?—Ariel, one star, please.”

“An’ the rope?”

“It’s the twisted kind I want, an’ it must go all around the—Oh, dear! Ariel, about an inch wide, please.”

“Good! one cat, one star, one inch rope. Anything more, little lamb?”

“No-o-o, could ye do it now?”

“Aye, dearie, fetch me the ruler, the paper, an’ a pencil.”

So Janny watched Ariel’s thin fingers work skilfully, swiftly with the pencil, the ruler measuring off star points and a cat’s length as carefully as if the paper were Welsh flannel worth one-and-six a yard. And the next night, after a day of unusual elation of feeling, Janny, when sleep had come to Ariel, stole noiselessly from the marital side, crept to the whitewashed wall of their bedroom pallid in moonshine, felt for the white paper cat and star and length of rope hanging there indiscernible, caught the edge of the paper with her fingers as she felt about, unpinned the pieces, and tiptoed out of the room and down the stairway. As she moved about the sitting-room in her night-gown, she looked pathetically little, the flush in her cheeks marking her eager helplessness. Much had slipped by her, and she had lost much in that sorry life before Ariel took her and brought her to live among strangers, whose motives and feelings she had no means of penetrating. But the tenderness, the innocence, the expectancy of childhood had remained with her, as if making amends for her loss or awaiting the sunshine of maturing impulses. She set a candle beside the settle, lifted the cover, took out two long rolls of paper, closed the settle, and bore her parcels to the table. Then she untied them with trembling fingers, rolling out several feet of green and crimson paper and a small sheet of yellow. She placed weights on the corners of the lengths, pausing to run her fingers into her hair as she gazed with rapt eyes upon the coloured surfaces, commonplace enough to all appearances. She took the cat, laid it carefully on the crimson, pinned it down and pencilled around the edges. In the same fashion she drew the outlines for four yellow stars and some lengths of yellow rope. Finally, with a pair of shears she cut out all the outlined figures. She lifted the cat, freed now from the matrix of surrounding paper and enlivened with the lifelikeness of a new liberty, and held its foot and a half of length against the candle-light. The light shone through the crimson paper but dimly. Janny nodded, took a small cake of paraffin, melted it, and with a bit of cloth sponged the cat as it lay upon the table. This she did also to the four yellow stars, to the lengths of rope, and to a large piece of green paper upon which the original cat pattern had been appliquÉd. Once more she lifted the crimson animal to the light,—the candle-flame shone through clearly with a beautiful crimson flood of softer light. After this Janny broke a half-dozen eggs, separating the white from the yolk. Her fingers worked feverishly now, and her eyes kept measuring distances; in her nervous haste there were moments when she seemed hardly able to accomplish the next step forward in the task she saw already complete in her mind’s eye. She stopped to listen for sounds and steps as she worked, and again and again she imagined that Ariel was looking down from the head of the staircase. But she finished the work uninterrupted, and with a sigh, half-sob of weariness, half-contentment, and with many a glance of admiration as she went, she tiptoed up the stairway. Ariel was sleeping, and as she crept into bed she put out a hand to touch his thick black hair, and then, curling into the cool white of her pillow, fell asleep as children sleep, one hand resting lightly on his arm.

JANNY WATCHED ARIEL'S THIN FINGERS WORK SKILFULLY