As I have said, I am twenty years older than Nancy, and I am her cousin.
I live in the old Greer house on Orange Street, for it is mine by
inheritance, and was to have gone to Nancy at my death. But it will not
go to her now. Yet I sometimes wonder--will the ship which carried her
away ever sail back into the harbor? Some day, when she is old, will she
walk up the street and be sorry to find strangers in the house?

I remember distinctly the day when the yacht first anchored within the
Point. It was a Sunday morning and Nancy and I had climbed to the top of
the house to the Captain's Walk, the white-railed square on the roof
which gave a view of the harbor and of the sea.

Nancy was twenty-five, slim and graceful. She wore that morning a short
gray-velvet coat over white linen. Her thick brown hair was gathered
into a low knot and her fine white skin had a touch of artificial color.
Her eyes were a clear blue. She was really very lovely, but I felt that
the gray coat deadened her--that if she had not worn it she would not
have needed that touch of color in her cheeks.

She lighted a cigarette and stood looking off, with her hand on the
rail. "It is a heavenly morning, Ducky. And you are going to church?"

I smiled at her and said, "Yes."

Nancy did not go to church. She practiced an easy tolerance. Her people
had been, originally, Quakers. In later years they had turned to
Unitarianism. And now in this generation, Nancy, as well as Anthony
Peak, had thrown off the shackles of religious observance.

"But it is worth having the churches just for the bells," Nancy conceded