The twilight deepened into darkness, and a cold mist began to fall in
slow, drizzling drops. Still Stephen stood, absorbed in his reverie, and
unmindful of the chill.

The hall door opened, and an old woman peered out. She held a lamp in one
hand; the blast of cold air made the flame flicker and flare, and, as she
put up one hand to shade it, the light was thrown sharply across her
features, making them stand out like the distorted features of a hideous
mask.

"Steve! Steve!" she called, in a shrill voice. "Supper's been waitin' more
'n half an hour. Lor's sake, what's the boy thinkin' on now, I wonder?"
she muttered in an impatient lower tone, as Stephen turned his head
slowly.

"Yes, yes, Marty. Tell my mother I will be there in a moment," replied
Stephen, as he walked slowly toward the house; even then noting, with the
keen and relentless glance of a beauty-worshipper, how grotesquely ugly
the old woman's wrinkled face became, lighted up by the intense
cross-light. Old Marty's face had never looked other than lovingly into
Stephen's since he first lay in her arms, twenty-five years ago, when she
came, a smooth-cheeked, rosy country-woman of twenty-five, to nurse his
mother at the time of his birth. She had never left the home since. With a
faithfulness and devotion only to be accounted for by the existence of
rare springs of each in her own nature, surely not by any uncommon
lovableness in either Mr. or Mrs. White, or by any especial comforts in
her situation, she had stayed on a quarter of a century, in the hard
position of woman of all work in a poor family. She worshipped Stephen,
and, as I said, her face had never once looked other than lovingly into