There in one of the pigeonholes were the letters. Anne hesitated. Margaret need never know; there seemed no other way. She brushed aside the strange qualm and drew out the letters, several of them, addressed to Miss Margaret Duffy, in a bold, square hand. Freda Innsmere, Truesdale Camp, on the flap. At least the child hadn’t lied. She had the folded sheet in her fingers when behind her she heard a little strangled cry, and turning, she faced Margaret. She made an instinctive motion of concealment, but the envelope slipped to the floor. For an instant, as the wide, incredulous horror of Margaret’s gaze travelled from that white square up to her mother’s face, Anne shared that horror, as though she saw her guilty reflection in the girl’s dark stormy eyes. Only for an instant. Then she spoke, crisply.

“I am sorry, Margaret. But if you insist upon concealment, it is necessary for me to do this.”

Margaret stood motionless, a little figure of bronze, save for her quick breathing.

“Perhaps you came back to hide these letters?” Anne added cruelly. She saw the adorable young curves of shoulder and knee melt from bronze to trembling flesh. “Unless you are ashamed, Margie, why do you hide them from mother?” Her voice filled again with its soft, rich tones. “Come, sit here beside me, and tell me about this new friend.”

Margaret shrank away from her outstretched hands, retreated along the end of the bed, clinging to the footrail, her knuckles showing white through the tan.

“Oh, you shouldn’t touch them!” she cried out. “They are mine—and you shouldn’t touch them!”

“Margaret, dear, mother wants only what is best for you. You know that. This woman has made you secretive, ashamed.”

“I’m not ashamed!” Margaret’s lips struggled with tears.

Anne lifted the sheet and unfolded it. With a swift movement, Margaret was in front of her.

“If you read that—I—I’ll hate you!” she cried.

Anne dropped the letter and pulled the girl into her warm embrace.

“Margie, little Margie! You are my daughter! Flesh of my flesh, spirit of my spirit! I won’t have a stranger standing between us!” She felt the child’s tears on her throat, felt her body stiffen within her arms. “I shall not read those letters against your will. But you will bring them to me.”

She went slowly from the room. She turned at the door; Margaret stood motionless, her head averted. Something in her posture tore at Anne, like a rending of flesh from flesh. A strange fear hurried at her heels down the hall. Later she knew what that pain and fear had been; worse than birth-anguish, they were the labor pains of her new knowledge.

Anne took her sewing down to the screened porch. She had discovered years earlier that whenever life snarled itself up, she had only to sit down with something in her hands, something requiring attention, and gradually, without effort on her part, things would smooth themselves out. So she sat now, her fingers busy with bright orange wool with which she embroidered a blouse for Margaret. Finally she heard Jamie wake, and scramble off in search of his brother.

Then she heard within the house Margaret’s voice, clear with delight;

“Father! I didn’t know you were coming today!”

Anne laid aside her sewing with a secret faint dismay, which she banished instantly. She found Robert in the hall; Margaret, hanging over the banister, drew back at Anne’s approach.

“Hello, Anne.” Robert kissed the cool cheek Anne offered. “The city was so beastly I came out a day early. Had your swim, Margie? Fine, I want to see that new dive you wrote about.”

“I’ll wait for you down by the boathouse,” said Margaret, and she whisked down the stairs and out of the door.

“Don’t let her stay in the water too long, Robert,” said Anne. “She seems tired. And bring the boys back when you come.”

Anne went slowly back to her sewing. A faint disturbance lingered under her ignoring concentration on the orange stitches.

Dinner was rather silent, in spite of Anne’s gentle and insistent talk. Margaret and her father had come in just in time to dress. Margaret had twisted her damp hair on the crown of her head and bound it with a green ribbon. That, with her green linen dress, gave her small pointed face with its winged brows the look of a startled dryad. Anne glanced at her often; there hung about her a cloud of excitement, like light over water. Once she found Robert, too, eyeing her speculatively.

When Anne came down from Jamie’s goodnight she found the porch deserted. Little Robert came back presently, somewhat disconsolate because Dad and Margie were taking a long walk and didn’t want him. He sat beside Anne, telling her in his shrill young voice of all he had done since morning. She sent him to bed finally, and at his summons, climbed the stairs to bid him goodnight. As she descended she heard Margaret and her father at the door.

“Goodnight, Bobs,” Margaret was saying. “And you’ll tell her? Oh, Bobs!”

“If you’ll promise to go straight to sleep and get unstrung a little. Goodnight, Margie.”

Margaret’s flight up the stairs carried her past her mother before she saw her.

“Goodnight, dear,” called Anne.

Margaret hesitated, whirled, came back the few steps, lifting her face mutely toward Anne.

“Goodnight, mother’s little girl.” Anne kissed her wistfully. “Sleep well.” Again at Margaret’s hasty withdrawal, she felt that strange fear. But she went calmly down to the porch, where Robert waited.

“Have you time to talk awhile?” he asked abruptly, and she heard in his voice an excitement like Margaret’s. He waited until she had settled herself in a low chair, and then dropped opposite her against a pillar. He lighted a cigar, the light glowing within his fingers.

“Are you very tired this week?” she asked.

“Nothing unusual,” he dismissed her inquiry bruskly. “I want to talk about Margaret.”

Had the child gone to her father, tale-bearing! That would be unendurable.

“She’s been telling me things—” Robert paused.

“She didn’t tell you about her letters?” Anne spoke with frigid scorn.

“Letters? No.”

“Well?” Anne waited, the autumn dusk wrapping her in outward tranquillity.

“The beginning, I suppose, is a call I had last week. I thought I wouldn’t write about it. A Miss Innsmere came into the office one day. She was at this camp where you sent Margaret, a dancing teacher. Quite a person, too, I judge, young, vigorous—a Danish girl. She came in about Margaret. Thinks the child has a talent for dancing.”

“Why did she go to you?” Anne found it difficult to keep her voice from bristling.

“Because you weren’t in town, I suppose. She seemed to think we wouldn’t take to the idea, and so she came to talk it over.”

“What idea?” Anne’s antagonism rippled in her tone.

“Why, of Margaret’s dancing. She thinks she ought to study—Margie, I mean. On the side, for a few years. Then she’ll know whether it’s the thing. And Margie wants to.”

“You mean study dancing professionally?”

“Yes.”

“Ridiculous! I hope you told her we had our own plans for Margaret.”

“Now, wait a minute, Anne. You see, Margaret has been talking to me, too. She wants to do it.”

“You haven’t encouraged her!”

“I have listened to her, Anne.”

“Why hasn’t she come to me about this?” Anne shut her hands together in her lap. The letters! They were about this scheme!

“Can’t you see? She is afraid you will disapprove. Afraid she can’t make you see how much she wishes to try it.”

“She knows it is absurd, then, if she is so sure of my disapproval.”

“Is it, Anne? Why?”

“A public dancer! That child? Are you mad, Robert?”

“Margaret said to me tonight, and she didn’t sound childlike, that she thought she had to dance. She studied last year, you know, at school. She says—and you know how shy she is with words—that it is the only thing she loves. That she can say things she feels and thinks that way. That she feels as though she has just been waiting until she found this out. We walked down through the Black Firs tonight, and she danced for me, a dance she had made for the trees, she said. Anne, it was the loveliest dream I ever saw!”

Anne was silent. Her hands moved together up to her heart, as if to hold close the edges of a gaping wound. After the grief of the afternoon Margaret had taken her father away to dance for him. Margaret was afraid to come to her.

“You know, Anne,” went on Robert eagerly, “I have a strong belief that a desire like that is—well, sort of sacred. That we haven’t any business to stand in the way. Don’t you think so?”

“She’s only a child,” said Anne coldly. “She doesn’t really know what she wants.”

“I’m not so sure. I knew what I wanted earlier than that. Didn’t you? I didn’t get it.” His voice dropped wrily. “That’s no reason why Margaret shouldn’t.”

“Surely, Robert, you don’t believe what you are saying—that a child knows better what it needs than its mother—its parents can know?”

“Ah, Anne, we don’t know much! If this isn’t the right thing, she has plenty of time to find it out.” Robert pulled himself to his feet, drew a chair near Anne’s, and seated himself. “You think, probably, that I don’t appreciate how this makes you feel. Shall I tell you? You are feeling as though a picture you had started to paint suddenly walked off your canvas!”