receded from her attention as if they had been fantastic shadows. Pa,
sitting holding his exhausted hubble-bubble, was as though he had no
existence at all. Jenny was lost in memory and the painful aspirations
of her own heart.


iii

How the moments passed during her reverie she did not know. For her it
seemed that time stood still while she recalled days that were
beautified by distance, and imagined days that should be still to come,
made to compensate for that long interval of dullness that pressed her
each morning into acquiescence. She bent nearer to the fire, smiling to
herself. The fire showing under the little door of the kitchener was a
bright red glowing ash, the redness that came into her imagination when
the words "fire" or "heat" were used--the red heart, burning and
consuming itself in its passionate immolation. She loved the fire. It
was to her the symbol of rapturous surrender, that feminine ideal that
lay still deeper than her pride, locked in the most secret chamber of
her nature.

And then, as the seconds ticked away, Jenny awoke from her dream and saw
that the clock upon the mantelpiece said half-past eight. Half-past
eight was what, in the Blanchard home, was called "time." When Pa was
recalcitrant Jenny occasionally shouted very loud, with what might have
appeared to some people an undesirable knowledge of customs, "Act of
Parliament, gentlemen, please"--which is a phrase sometimes used in
clearing a public-house. To-night there was no need for her to do that.
She had only to look at Pa, to take from his hand the almost empty pipe,
to knock out the ashes, and to say: