And as the result of that day's silent questioning of herself she went in person from editor to editor, as she had never done before, with a bundle of his manuscripts. And before many days, after numerous disappointments and more than one humiliation, she succeeded in disposing of no less than five of his stories. If, as a distributer of his wares she had moments of suffering, she learned to take an incongruous joy out of them, and no word of what she passed through ever reached Hartley's ears.
She, when all her maids were gone, With her cheek upon her hand, Gazed across a terraced lawn Down a twilit valley-land Where a white road twined and curled Through the hills that barred the west, Where some unknown outland world Filled her with a strange unrest.
It is the under crust of motive that is the test of the moral pie.--"The Silver Poppy."
Cordelia turned the letter over and over in her hands. Something of late always depressed her when she received these letters from home, in her father's stiff, ungainly hand and his none too perfect spelling.
"Poor old dad, he won't come, after all!" Cordelia found it hard to look as miserable as she ought.
"I told you he wouldn't, my dear," said Mrs. Spaulding, with rigid retrospective conviction of mind.
"Only because he thought you wanted him to."
Cordelia looked up at her companion quickly.
"Yes, yes; I do. But for some reason, you see, he's changed his mind."
"My dear, that was all a big, soft-hearted, foolish idea of yours. What would your poor old father at his age do in New York? How could he be happy or contented in a four-roomed flat after forty acres of hills? How long would he leave his own country for a howling wilderness of brick and mortar like this?"
"He would be near me," said Cordelia valiantly.
"Which probably wouldn't be so pleasant, after all, for either of you. Do you ever stop to think, my dear, just how much you've changed in the last year or so?"
For a few moments Cordelia was thoughtfully silent. She felt and knew that she had changed.
"But what shall I do with it?" she asked.
"Has it never occurred to you?" Mrs. Spaulding at that precise moment sincerely wished that she possessed the psychic power of mind-reading. She half suspected that Cordelia might be concealing more than she had need to.