She tried to read, but found it difficult. Across each page flamed
Christopher's sentences.... "We'll ride through the desert.... We'll set
our sails for strange harbors...."

Was that what the old man had meant at the circus.... "What you think is
evil--cannot be evil"? Would Christopher give her all that she had hoped
of Ridgeley? If she lived to be eighty, she and Ridgeley would--jog. Was
Christopher right--"You'll have more happiness in a few months than some
people in a lifetime?"

She heard her husband moving about in the next room, the water booming
in his bath. A thin line of light showed under his door.

She shut her book and turned out her lamp. The storm had died down and
the moon was up. Through the open window she could see beyond the garden
to the grove of birches.

Hitherto, the thought of the little grove had been as of a sanctuary.
She was aware, suddenly, that it had become a place of contending
forces. Were the guardian angels driven out...?

_But there weren't any guardian angels_! Ridgeley had said that they
were silly. And Christopher didn't believe in them. She wished that her
mother might have lived to talk it over. Her mother had had no doubts.

The door of her husband's room opened, and he was silhouetted against
the light. Coming up to the side of her bed, he found her wide-eyed.

"Can't you sleep, my dear?"