In late August of the next year, Thomasina came slowly across the green from the Lister house toward the campus gate. Mrs. Lister had begged her to stay longer, but she had felt a need for quietness. Mrs. Lister had been talking about Basil; she had not yet exhausted all possibilities for conversation in his strange posthumous fame, or in his attachment to Thomasina, so long unsuspected. She did not ask many questions at one time of Thomasina; they came slowly, a question or two this week, another question next month. Sometimes she wept.

"There are times when I can see just how I thought that dreadful thing about Basil and there are other times when I just cannot understand!"

"I wouldn't think of it," said Thomasina cheerfully. "And, anyway, Mary Alcestis, you didn't hurt any one but yourself."

A flood of tears choked Mrs. Lister's voice.

"I could explain it to Basil. He was always very kind and understanding." She looked at Thomasina with a sort of angry astonishment. "You are always so calm, and I—I am homesick to see Basil. I shall never be altogether at peace until I see him."

"Yes," said Thomasina, "I can understand that."

"You ought to be with Richard as much as you can," said Mrs. Lister. "In another month he will have gone back to New York."

Thomasina smiled. Across from the chapel drifted the sound of music. Richard had spent a day inside the old organ and had coaxed and wheedled it into a new sound. He was now on the organ bench with Eleanor beside him. For Richard at his happiest moments there was still a favorite form of expression, the chants of his boyhood. With full organ he sang the Ambrosian Hymn. The Gregorian music, the summer evening, Richard's voice—Thomasina was never to forget them.

Then Richard established a deep and majestic foundation for his clear tenor:

"She is a nice girl," said Mrs. Lister, her voice trembling. Music was still terrible to Mary Alcestis. "I am satisfied. I believe she will make a good wife to Richard. He wants her to write, but I don't believe she thinks much about writing now. And her mother is a nice woman," added Mrs. Lister. "She has excellent ideas and she has trained Eleanor."

Thomasina intended to stop for a moment in the chapel and went so far as the threshold. Then, seeing the two heads close together, she turned away. She did not fear interrupting Richard and Eleanor—there was no one among all her acquaintances, least of all these two, whom she could interrupt. But she turned away. Youth, with its confidence and its ignorance, was alien to her mood; youth which knew nothing of heartache, which had no visions of a loved body, covered—how many years ago!—with earth, of lonely days, of nights filled with rebellion. Even Mary Alcestis, who thought herself so wise in grief, knew nothing.

The Scott house was closed, the Scott family scattered, in happy separation, Mrs. Scott with her son at Atlantic City and Dr. Scott and little Cora exploring in Italy. Thinking of them, Thomasina smiled. She saw Dr. Scott enchanted, inarticulate. It seemed to her that each of her friends had that which his heart desired—even Mrs. Bent, whom Waltonville still called Mrs. Bent, though it knew better, who stayed in her little gray house adoring her household gods, and even Dr. Green, who seemed to crave management by his daughter. Neither Dr. Green nor Mrs. Bent felt apparently any reviving flame of affection, but jealousy at least was gone. Both now had Eleanor.

Each one, it seemed to Thomasina, entering her gate, had some hearth whereat to warm himself, some eyes wherein to see himself reflected. The latch of her door felt cold, the cool hall vault-like. The house was empty; she shivered as she entered it.

She moved across her parlor. On the shelf nearest her throne-like chair stood four books, which she took one by one into her hand and then put back. All had been completed as Dr. Scott had planned, all had been brought out in perfection to the delight of the discerning. She did not open them, did not need to open them to read.

"The admirers of Basil Everman are grateful to his friend Thomasina Davis, of Waltonville, to whom he wrote constantly during the last years of his life his aspirations and his plans. Miss Davis has allowed his biographer to make extracts from his correspondence."

Here was fame—the only fame for which Thomasina cared!

When she sat down before the garden door, tears were in her eyes. Her flowers offered their incense to the sky; the sound of Richard's music was carried softly to her by the evening breeze. The hour was enchanted. She was too wise not to know that it was a space set apart, that unhappiness, discontent, a fierce resistance to life as it was, would have their hours also. But this was reality—to that she held with a divine stubbornness—this hour in which Basil, young, radiant, immortal, stood beside her. For such hours as this, infrequent though they were, she had declined other loves, refused to sit at warmer hearths.

remembered Thomasina.

"'I, Sergius, live!'" said she, aloud.

Then, folding her hands, she sat quietly.

The Riverside Press
CAMBRIDGE . MASSACHUSETTS
U . S . A