It had only given him the desire, the safe necessity, to comprehend the
powerful emotion that held Fanny and him secure against any accident to
their love. To their love! The repetition, against his contrary
intention, took on the accent of a challenge. However, he proceeded
mentally, it wasn't the unassailable fact that was challenged, but the
indefinable word love. Admiration, affection, passion, were clear in
their meanings--but love! His brow contracted in a frown spreading in a
shadowy doubt over his face when he saw that he had almost reached the
clubhouse; its long steep-pitched bulk lay directly across the path of
dusk, approaching from the east; and a ruddy flicker in the glass doors
on the veranda showed that a fire had been lighted. To his left, down
over the dead sod and beyond a road, he could see the broad low fa?ade
of his house with its terraced lawn and aged stripped maples. There,
too, a window was bright on the first floor: probably Fanny was hearing
the children's lessons.
* * * * *
That cheerful interior he completely visualized: Fanny, in the nicest
possible attire, sitting in the curly-maple rocking-chair, her
slippered feet--she had a premonition of rheumatism--elevated on the
collapsible stool she carried about with her; and Helena and Gregory
hanging on her knees. Gregory, of course, had tomorrow's task easily in
hand, with another star for a day's good conduct in school; but Helena,
shining in the gold and flush of her radiant inattention, would know
nothing.
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