When the next morning came, Poppea kept her bed for the first time since the childhood days of whooping-cough and measles. From sunrise waves of intense heat swept the village and outlying country, intensified rather than veiled by the low-hanging mists. Yet this alone could not account for the flushed cheeks and restless sparkle of her eyes, or the weariness of limb that almost refused to let her move. The fact was that she had not slept, but each hour of the summer night had brought a new phantom with which she had struggled. In so far as it was possible, she had ceased to dwell upon the theme of The Mystery of the Name, now it had returned with new force to haunt her, and with it the persecution of John Angus. This in itself was hard enough to bear, but it meant also complete separation from Philip, who had come to be such a part of her inner life that no one else seemed fully to comprehend that even the idea of readjustment was impossible.

The unintentional abruptness of Bradish Winslow in stating the pith of Angus's complaints against the post-office, by its very shock had brought her face to face with the fact that she had tried to conceal even from herself. Oliver Gilbert was swiftly coming to a time when, if he did not resign, his age and slowness of motion might surely be cast up against him for some trivial oversight that would, in a younger man, pass unnoticed.

For a time the danger of dismissal was probably averted; that is, if Winslow's attitude of apparent sympathy was sincere. Was he to be trusted? Standing face to face with him the night before, it had not occurred to her to doubt him. Away from him, a certain sustaining magnetism coming from his entire confidence in himself, blended with an agreeable personality, was lacking, and Poppea wondered if he had read her aright, or taken her justification as a clever bit of acting. And why not, if John Angus could so misjudge her!

Other women of her age and naturally emotional temperament might take peeps into the promised land of love and romance even before the gate opened and they were bidden to enter. The knowledge of her own name was the only key to the gate for her; she had long since resolved this, that evening at the opera when the Knight of the Grail, to her a real personality, had disappeared. But since then the doubt had come to her, suppose that the knowing proved to her also a final barrier instead of the key?

Oliver Gilbert was appalled at Poppea's indisposition, which he viewed in the light of a positive disaster. Leaving his six o'clock cup of coffee untasted, he went about putting up the early mail with shaking hands and a lack of precision that might well have called down criticism, had it been observed. Neither did he draw comfort from Mrs. Shandy's common-sense assurance that "Miss Poppy is only a bit done up with the strong heat coming all of a sudden, and having to sing before such a gathering of the quality for the first time. When she's rested a bit and had a nice cup of breakfast tea and some toast, she'll be quite another thing."

The doctor must be had! Nothing else would satisfy Gilbert. So, about eleven o'clock, when Miss Emmy drove down in the barouche to tell Poppea the pleasant gossip about the party, together with the comments upon her singing, encountering Bradish Winslow in spotless white clothes sauntering in the same direction, Dr. Morewood's chaise came up the Westboro road and halted at the gate of the post-office house a little ahead of them.

Miss Emmy, on hearing that he had called to see Poppea, followed him into the house, while Winslow went into the office and, over the buying of a newspaper, drew Gilbert into conversation.

Whether it was the tea and toast that had the predicted effect, or the fact that Poppea had finally acquired the mastery of herself and remembered that Winslow had promised to look at the post-office and its master through his own eyes and judgment, at the moment that Miss Emmy was ushered into the parlor she heard, through the open window, Dr. Morewood's voice talking to Poppea in the room above.

"Something is worrying you, child; get away from here for a week and look at things from a different place," he said. "If it's too lively for you at Felton Manor, go over to the Mills. Dear little Mrs. Oldys is nearly down ill through homesickness for Hugh, and the next best thing to seeing him will be to see some one who knows him to whom she can read his letters. It'll do you good to go up there, with that view over the Moosatuck to the hills that every sunrise is like a glimpse of the promised land, and it will be a perfect godsend to her. Do you know, sometimes I think that plucky little woman is simply clinging to life by the love she has for her husband and son. I've been so impressed with the idea this spring that about a month ago I wrote Hugh asking him if he couldn't shorten his trip and come home early in August, so as to give some leeway before he goes to his new work in September.

"I am going up to the Oldyses' now; may I tell Madam that you're coming, say this afternoon?"

Poppea was looking out the window to where the grim outline of the chimneys and roof of John Angus's house could be seen above the vines that covered the parapet. Yes, she realized that she must go somewhere if only for a couple of days, to be out of sight of that dominant house and all that it implied, until she could pull herself together once more, so she nodded in assent and followed the doctor downstairs.

"Not sick, but playing lazy and caught at it," was her reply to Miss Emmy's outstretched hands, and eyes full of sympathy.

"You see that putting on fine feathers and spending an evening with the quality has quite turned my head," she continued, forcing her sprightliest manner that Miss Emmy might be led from questioning her too closely.

"Then your head will have to stay turned, for every one who heard you sing last night wishes to hear you again," and the loquacious little lady ran over a long list of names that represented not only many of the bricks and beams of New York society, but much of the decorative superstructure as well.

"You always said that you wanted to step out and really do something against the time when Daddy would be too old to keep the post-office, and now here is the chance. You are to come to us in New York and be properly introduced at our first musical of the winter, and then you will have all the engagements you can fill at fifty dollars each for the rest of the season. Two or three a week will be a plenty and leave you time for lessons with Tostelli or some one equally good. Then, by and by, when you have acquired manner, and you are well known, you might consent to sing at a few public concerts, given of course under the patronage of our best people. But we mustn't whisper of that yet; sister Elizabeth would not hear of such a thing. You will naturally spend the winter with us, for the post-office work is very light in the off season, I've heard you say.

"I will tell you a secret," and Miss Emmy drew Poppea toward her with a dramatic air of extreme caution. "I've come to the time at which I used to think I should adopt a young girl. I can no longer wear pink and pale blue with impunity! I'm growing sallow! I must, therefore, think out pretty costumes for some one else—for you. For the first winter, simple dresses with flower trimmings will be very telling; violet tulle and wistaria, corn-colored gauze and cowslips," and Miss Emmy's hands, flexible and nervous, described the lines and folds of flower-wreathed draperies, as she spoke.

"What do you think? Don't you like the idea, child? I'm going to carry you off to the Manor for luncheon, and afterward to call on some of the hill people before their guests, who came for last night, disperse. There is nothing like striking while the iron is hot, but especially with people of the beau monde; if you let them cool off, there's the heating process all to be done over again, whereas this time it was simply a case of spontaneous combustion with you as the spark."

In spite of her vivacity and high spirits, Miss Emmy coughed wrackingly when she stopped, and even a casual observer could see the ominous falling away at the temples and behind the ears, as well as the wrinkling of the throat under its bertha of embroidered mull.

"I like the idea of singing as an employment," said Poppea, when Miss Emmy paused long enough to let her be heard; "but as to all the rest—well, that would have to be on a business basis also. From the moment I begin to earn money, I must pay money. You see, dear Aunty, up to now it's been all for love and love in return, and now—it must be different."

"Don't be obstinate, Poppy, for if you are and put on that determined look, I shall have to call you Julia, even in private."

"No, I'm not obstinate, neither can I change; it is simply this, I cannot allow myself to be an object of charity any longer. Ask Mr. Latimer. I have talked of it with him, and he understands. Ah, Aunty, Aunty, I cannot go on standing in false positions. If they like my singing and it is worthy, I will sing, but I do not want it to come by social favor only."

"Think it over, child, and don't try to fly with ideas for wings that may do very well here at Harley's Mills, but not in New York," Miss Emmy replied, rather tartly for her. "I don't think that in your present state of mind you will improve your prospects by calling on those who heard you last night; they would best keep you in mind as the dreamy looking girl with downcast eyes and poppies in her hair." Miss Emmy walked out to the carriage without more ado, while Poppea wondered if it was going to be her fate to be misunderstood.

Going to the post-office, she encountered Winslow, who was occupying a chair inside the beehive and alternately chatting with and scrutinizing Gilbert over the edge of a New York Herald in which he was ostensibly studying the stock market.

By the furtive glance that Gilbert gave her, Poppea knew he had been talking of her, therefore her color heightened, and no one less keen than Winslow in taking every detail of a woman's appearance in a casual glance would have noticed that the shadows under her eyes were not those of her lashes. She was dressed in a straight white gown akin to that of a trained nurse in its simplicity, without a single touch of color other than her hair; yet the effect in the bare surroundings of the shop was to envelop her with a virginal freshness that appealed to Winslow even more than the more poetic costume of the previous evening.

"Having made the acquaintance of Cinderella, who vanished, I've now come to call upon the Postmistress, hoping that she will not also disappear," he said, taking her hand with a caressing touch that was personal enough to be remembered, but not of a quality to be resented.

"Sit down here, child, and just cast your eye over this money-order to be sure if it is right, for Stephen Latimer may come for it any time. Mr. Winslow will excuse you a minute, I reckon," said Gilbert, as Poppea hesitated a moment in embarrassed silence, not knowing whether she should ask Winslow to the porch or garden, or merely take the call in her official capacity. The request decided the matter, and as Gilbert went over to his work bench to become instantly absorbed, she slipped into his revolving chair, glanced rapidly over the figures, separated note from stub, and returned the book to the drawer. When she again faced Winslow, her hands were clasped rather nervously in her lap.

"I came over this morning for two reasons," he said, as though in answer to a question in her eyes. "I was afraid that last night's excitement was altogether too much of a strain, and I wanted to reassure myself by a peep at you. Then I wished to tell you in plain, open daylight how deeply I feel about my unknowing brutality concerning this post-office business, and to ask you, if you can help it, not to let it tinge or prejudice your feelings about me, but to judge me only by the outcome. As it is, no one else need ever know the details except our two selves."

The look of intense relief that lighted Poppea's face and raised the drooping lip corners was perfectly apparent to Winslow, and also told him that doubt as to this outcome had probably broken her rest.

"I do not think of it as brutality even though it hurt, and though I shall not tell Daddy, because he would grieve himself sick, I must tell Mr. Latimer, because he has always known of everything concerning me, and helps me understand my troubles by holding them, as he says, in trust. For the rest, I can only thank you for taking the trouble to consider a passing stranger."

"I do not feel that you are a stranger; I did not when I first saw you dancing before the mirror, or yet again on the porch last night. You are to me Youth and all the good that belongs with it. We have met twice by accident, the third time by intent; does not that make us friends?"

As far as his emotions were concerned, Bradish Winslow at six and thirty might be said to have his second wind. The things that appealed to him with any permanence in these days knocked first at the door of his judgment where his Æsthetic taste was doorkeeper. It was by this route that Poppea stole swiftly along until his heart was reached, and responded before he even remembered that he had one. Then, too, she was as refreshing as the first sun-ripened strawberries of June after the complicated winter confections of the club.

Winslow found himself leaning toward Poppea, holding her eyes and speaking with a vibrating eagerness that would have surprised any one of his half-hundred city intimates, both male and female. Of a distinguished family, rich in moderation, and with no one to please but himself, Winslow, though an indispensable social factor, was, as far as women were concerned, a devoted cynic, always at the beck and call of some modish woman, usually either married or a widow, but whenever the chains of his own forging seemed likely to fetter, he had always eluded them, to seek safety in numbers once more.

He had no further reason for sitting in the stuffy little post-office than to see Poppea; he had no other reason for having stayed the second day at the hill, and yet, with all of his resources, quick wit, and elastic principles, he could devise no way of prolonging the interview or bringing Poppea into less conventional relations than her expressions of gratitude implied.

His hesitation surprised him, for on a still briefer acquaintance he had brought a very difficult and much-sought widow to ask him to luncheon, after which she had taken him to a round of "teas" in her carriage.

Winslow realized this as they sat there, presently talking of inane and safe topics, such as the heat, the city people visiting on the hill, and the tennis match to be held there next day, and it was almost a relief when Stephen Latimer, coming for his money-order, told Poppea that the Oldyses' rockaway was stopping at the Rectory and would be down for her in a quarter of an hour. As Latimer showed no signs of leaving immediately, there was nothing left for Winslow to do but bow himself out, more awkwardly than Stephen Latimer, who had known him of old, would have believed possible.

Once in the roadway, where he could throw back his shoulders and strike out, the web that he had sought to spin as a spider, but which had held him like a captive fly, parted, and he admonished himself in no measured terms.

"I wouldn't have thought it of you, Brad, my boy; there you sat as dumb as a fish, and she, when she got through being politely grateful, looked absolutely bored. It must be because you feel out of your running in a real cow-country place like this. Is it possible that you're falling in—? No, it's nonsense! But you'd give a pile to make her look in your face with something other than gratitude in her eyes. Well, maybe she'll go to the city some day, who knows. Meanwhile, we'll not let out of sight be out of mind."

This resolution was the foundation of a series of subtly chosen gifts sent at regular intervals that, coming in the mail, Poppea could not fail to see. As, however, after the first, from which fell a pressed poppy, they contained no sign, she could neither acknowledge nor return them, for their source was a matter of inference only. Neither did she know that Winslow, summering here, there, and everywhere, from Newport to the North Cape, had left an order with his agent for the sending of the remembrances; consequently, in spite of herself, he was kept in mind, and she was somewhat touched, according to his plan.

Poppea was shocked when she reached the Mill House to find how much Madam Oldys had changed in a few weeks, and she reproached herself for not having seen her oftener. But the house had seemed so strange and still without Hugh that she had avoided bringing herself face to face with its emptiness.

Yes, as the doctor said, the chord that held her soul in her body was Madam Oldys's love for husband and son. This Poppea saw as she knelt on the mat beside the straw lounging chair on the deeply shaded porch and watched the rapid pulsing at the thin temples as the time drew near for Mr. Oldys to come home to tea. He was very busy these days in remodelling the Mills and fitting them for a new manufacturing enterprise that should not only retrieve the heavy loss of the last years in the waning of the old business, but give work to the men who had built their homes and houses about him and the surging outlet of Moosatuck.

This night he was unaccountably late, and Poppea had already run the gamut of plausible excuses before Charlotte came out to inquire, after the comfortable manner of the old colored servant, if Missy Oldys wouldn't better have her tea before she went all gone from waiting. But a negative shake of the head was her answer.

"I think, my dear, that I will walk down to the gate to-night as usual, where I can see beyond the turn," she said to Poppea, at the same time trying to rise without aid and finding it impossible.

"He is coming!" cried Poppea. "Mr. Oldys has this moment turned into the road from the little gate in the south meadow. Ah, he has a man with him, a stranger; some one about the new machinery, probably, which accounts for his being late. There, he is waving his handkerchief, so everything is right," and Poppea waved hers in return, thus keeping up the significant little signal that had passed between this sweet old couple every summer evening, time out of mind.

"A stranger," the wifely anxiety instantly merging into the hospitable interest in a guest. "Then please ask Charlotte to add coffee and one of what Hugh called 'her hasty hot dishes' to supper; the ham omelet will be best. He may have come by train and had merely a sandwich at noon."

Poppea gave the order, and on her return looked again at the pair who had almost reached the gate. She had never before realized that Mr. Oldys either stooped or was short of stature; in fact, he was taller than the average, but his companion, broad-shouldered, dark, and trimly bearded, towered over him by half a head. At the gate they paused, and Mr. Oldys, putting his hand on the other's shoulder, leaned affectionately on it, while the stranger lifted and waved the wide-brimmed soft felt hat.

It was Hugh! the forehead line told the tale to Poppea that the beard had concealed.

With a swift gesture that warned the pair to come slowly, dreading the shock to Madam Oldys that might come from the unexpected, Poppea knelt again by the chair, and putting one hand each side of the face, still beautiful with all its delicacy, turned it toward her and whispered:—

"Close your eyes and think of some one you would like to see coming across the field, then make a wish, for the fairies are about to-night."

The lids quivered and closed, then opened, and the eyes that read Poppea's were full of new life.

"It is Hugh! it is my boy! All day I have felt him come nearer, closer, but I thought it was only in spirit. Give me your hand; he must not find me idling. See, I am stronger already;" and Madam Oldys not only stood up, but walked toward the steps, barely leaning on the arm that Poppea stretched out to steady her, to be grasped the next moment by a strong pair of arms in an embrace that stifled her cry halfway and lifted her from her feet, while as Poppea tried to slip back, she found her hand held in the same grasp and a kiss fell squarely upon her lips.

She did not blush then or separate the greeting in any way from the good-by of ten months before. But later, as they gathered about the supper table where Madam Oldys sat behind the tray, handling the chubby tea-caddy for the first time in months, and Poppea looked at Hugh as he attacked the "hasty hot dish" with a traveller's relish, she knew that he was and yet was not the same. The span of the months and distance had added immeasurably to the man, but the boy, the chum, the comrade, that he had been even throughout his college days, had vanished, and a hot color flushed her face up to her hair roots until she became so conscious of it that she put her hand up as though to shade her eyes from the light.

Before, Hugh Oldys had been clean shaven and slender for his height; now he was filled out without fleshiness, and a closely trimmed beard and crisp, clearly pencilled mustache gave a new masculinity to his face without in any way concealing the determined yet flexible lips or the nostril curve that told of nerves high strung but perfectly under the control of will.

Naturally it was Hugh who talked the most, his father putting brief questions and gazing in deep contentment at his wife, who, without expressing a shadow of the loneliness she must have felt or even asking Hugh why he had shortened his year by nearly three months, was reviving and expanding; a miracle under their very eyes, like the refreshment of a plant that, withered and famished, takes hold of life anew even at the breath of the wind that brings rain.

A year before, Poppea would have stayed on as a matter of course, one of the family group, but now she felt that on this precious evening the three should be alone together, and when Hugh went upstairs to change to a coat more suitable to the sultry night, she whispered a few words in Madam Oldys's ear about feeling quite rested and not being needed now for company; then with a nod to Mr. Oldys, finger on lips, slipped through the side hall where hung her hat and scarf, and thence through the garden gate into the depths of the June evening, where every bush held a flower in bud and every tree a sleeping bird.

The Oldyses saw nothing strange in her going, for she had always come and gone at will. Rather it was another proof of her thought of them, this silent understanding that three was company that night; besides, a half-mile walk alone on a street where each house kept watch over its neighbor, was a mere nothing to a village girl.

"Where is Poppea?" was Hugh's question on reËntering, his hands full of the trinkets of travel that he had pulled hastily from his grip. "Gone home? alone in the dark? why, Mother!" and dropping his burden in her lap, he went out the low French window and sprang over the piazza rail without turning the corner for the steps.

Mother and father, sitting side by side, exchanged glances and a hand pressure that revealed that they two recognized a change in Hugh, but that they were well content in the knowledge.

Poppea walked down the side road to the main street that passed the base of Quality Hill before she heard the rapid footsteps behind her that halted presently by her side. No word was spoken, but her hand was drawn through a muscular arm and held there fast. A year ago this might have happened without comment, but the arm was not the same, neither the hand that rested on it.

"What made you run away, Poppea? You never did before; that is, never but once."

As soon as he had completed the heedless sentence, Hugh was sorry, while to Poppea it was as though some one had spread the last seven years of her life before her guised in a knitted fabric, and slipping the thread, bade her ravel it stitch by stitch to its beginning.

"I thought you would wish to be alone with the home people," she said, searching for her words as if they were packed away for lack of use.

"And what are you if you are not one of the home people? what else have you ever been to me since the day that I first saw you and for a moment wasn't quite sure whether I wanted you or the puppy the most?"

Poppea could not answer at once; the ground seemed unsteady. The months of parting had broken the old shuttle and snapped the thread; what pattern would the new loom weave that the meeting had set in motion?

At this moment they were passing the church, and the lamp in Stephen Latimer's study cast a path of light across the turf almost to their feet, against which the outline of his face was silhouetted.

"Aren't you going in to see the Latimers?" she said, forgetting that Hugh's last question was unanswered.

"No, not to-night; to-morrow. This hour is mine and yours, Poppea. Why do you shiver so and draw away; you've always taken my arm?"

"I didn't know that I was doing either, but somehow everything seems different to-night, strange and new. Perhaps it is because I've not been feeling quite myself for a few days. Only this morning the doctor sent me up to the Mill House for a change." Then, in her turn, Poppea regretted the final words.

"And my homecoming has sent you away when you were tired, and that is why you falter. This is a bitter thought."

"It is not exactly that; I don't know what it is, but that I seem to bring distress upon all those I care for," and from a rush of half-coherent words he heard of her friendship with Philip and its results to him, and in a partial way the danger to Oliver Gilbert. As she talked, they had reached the post-office house gate.

The house itself was dark, but a light shone from Gilbert's workroom. On the side porch the ample figure of Mrs. Shandy rocked to and fro, fanning vigorously.

As Poppea turned toward the steps, almost stumbling in her fatigue, Hugh guided her along the path to a bench by the orchard edge, an old schoolhouse bench with a platform under foot that he had made once, years ago, when Gilbert had chided Poppea for letting the dew spoil her new Sunday shoes.

"Sit here," he said; "take off your hat and let the air blow through your hair, while I get you some water."

How good it seemed to have some one say with authority, "do this," or "do that," the unspoken motive being "because it is for your good." Then she began to realize that during the last few months she and Daddy had rather been shifting places in point of responsibility.

She drank the water slowly and gratefully, knowing through the clear starlight that his eyes were on her face, and as she drank she breathed the perfume of the half-double damask roses that had long ago crept from the garden above the parapet to make a thicket on either side the bank.

"A little while ago you said that everything seemed different and strange. Then both of us feel this. I had not landed on the other shore last autumn, hardly left this even, when the wrench of parting told me that everything was different, and would remain so. But I wanted you to have a chance to feel it for yourself if might be, and I kept it from my letters,—though I knew they were like wretched guide-books,—because I dared not let myself go.

"To-night, when I came back, hurried by Dr. Morewood's letter, and saw the woman who gave me life clinging to my little comrade, I knew the time had come when I must tell her that my love had changed."

"Then can we no longer be friends?" Poppea asked faintly. "Must I lose you, too, as I have lost Philip?"

"Always friends, Poppea; that is the beginning. Are not Stephen Latimer and Jeanne friends? and my father and mother also? But it must be more than friends, everything that a man and woman may be to each other. The change is that I love you as Latimer does Jeanne, that I want you for my wife.

"Is that strange to you, Poppea? or does it seem to you as it does to me, the fulfilment?" and Hugh leaned toward her, pale and anxious, in the starlight and holding out his arms.

Poppea turned quickly as though she would let him take her, then catching her breath, drew back, covering her face with her hands, while a half-forgotten harmony forced itself on her ears, and once more the Knight of the Grail waving farewell, with the mystic sadness on his face, passed before her mental vision.

"Oh, Hugh!" she moaned, "I've lost you, lost you! It isn't what I feel; it isn't what I wish! Don't you see that I can never be any man's wife, much less yours, who knows my whole life through, until I can give my own name with my love?"

"That is for me to say, and I say yes!" cried Hugh, holding her to him as though to prove her need of protection.

"No, it is for neither of us to say; it is something beyond ourselves. I cannot tell why, but I know it," Poppea answered, without the tremor of the previous moment, but with a pleading dignity that made Hugh drop his arms.

"Suppose that something should some day come to light, when it was too late, that made it wrong for me to love you, we might not be able to bear the harm of it only ourselves." Then springing up with all the intensity of nerve and lithe motion that marked her dancing, she stood before him, with hands clasped, beseeching.

"Oh, Hugh, Hugh, can't you help me; won't you help me find out who I am? for sometimes I think that Daddy knows and will not tell!"

"And if I can, is that all that stands between us, Poppea? Look into my face so that I can see your eyes when you answer me."

"Oh, Hugh, be patient with me, be merciful! How can I say until I know my name, for it may be—that I have no real right to any."

It was so long before Hugh spoke that Poppea found herself counting her heart-beats, so keenly was the silence borne in upon her.

Then she said timidly: "Meanwhile, Hugh, could you—could we go on being friends? Your mother and Daddy, what could I say to them if we didn't speak? What should I do without you?"

Once more he drew her toward him, this time gently, not passionately. "It isn't an easy road that is before us, little one, but it is hardest for you, because I must, in any event, go out to make my way. Though I do not agree with your resolution, I do not say it is wrong.

"I love you, man to woman; that is where I stand. You must not forget this for a moment, as I shall not. But you must not fear that I shall harry you. I shall not tell you this in words again until you say to me, 'I need you, Hugh.'"

"Not even if the mystery of the name is solved?"

"Not even then, for only under such conditions will you cease to be on your guard, and without frankness the name of friendship would be a farce."

"And your mother, if she asks you—I think now she has perhaps thought—"

"Yes, she loves you, Poppea, as my mother should love my wife. She is the only one who has a right to ask. I shall tell the truth, which is that we have come to a perfect understanding.

"One thing more, Poppea; remember you are not bound."

If he could only have known the aching loneliness that fell upon her at these words; again she seemed to feel herself cut adrift. With a sudden turn she clung to him, and he, lifting her face, kissed her on lips and eyes, whispering, "To-morrow or five years hence, you need only speak or write the four words."