And just then Sally came to say the table was ready, and slipping away from his encircling arms Vashti led the way to the table.
As the afternoon waned, Sidney’s nervousness increased. He strove to remember his sermon, and wandered restlessly about the house. At length he came to Vashti where she sat, book in hand, but busy with her own thoughts.
“I’m really worried over the people leaving so to-day,” he said. “Can it be that they are disappointed in me?”
“Why, no,” said Vashti, then asking a question which had been on the tip of her tongue all day: “Can’t you remember _anything_ of your sermon?”
“Not a word,” said Sidney, “isn’t it strange?”
“Oh, it’s just a freak of memory,” she said.
“Oh, I don’t mind that,” said Sidney, “but the worrying part is that I seem to remember that I was harsh, that I said cruel things and used the facts you have told me about their own lives to drive in the nails of a cruel argument. Did I do that? Oh, Vashti, tell me. I spoke, it seemed to me, filled with your spirit, so surely I could not have been brutal to them. It is an evil dream.”
His pale face was strained with the pain of his thoughts. Vashti was alarmed by the distress upon his countenance. She rose and took him by the hand.
“Lie down, Sidney,” she said, “and have a little rest. You are troubling yourself needlessly. Dole is full of freakish people. Temperance has quarrelled with all the women about something and they may have rushed off to avoid some dispute. Your flock think you are perfect. Sleep, Sidney, and forget these troubles. You are too sensitive.” He suffered himself to be led to the green leather couch and stretched himself upon it wearily. She bent above him, passing her strong magnetic hands across his brow, looking at him with almost pitiful eyes. Her pity was that of a vivisector who dares sympathize with the dumb creature he tortures.
Sidney looked up at her between the passes of her waving hands. For an instant his face was glorified, and he saw her again as he had seen her that first day on the old porch of the Lansing house, with her fingers shining like ivory in the sun, and her noble head set like a cameo upon the green background of wild cucumber vine which draped the porch.