To-night she rolled away the stone to the corner of the door-step,
where it had lain through three generations when the Crane women were
at home, and sighed with regret that she had defended the door with
it. "I wish I hadn't put the stone up," she thought. "If I hadn't,
mebbe he'd gone in an' waited." She opened the door, and the gloom of
the house, deeper than the gloom of the night, appeared. "You wait
here a minute," she said to Charlotte, "an' I'll go in an' light a
candle."

Charlotte waited, leaning against the door-post. There was a flicker
of fire within. Then Sylvia held the flaring candle towards her.
"Come in," she said; "the candle's lit."

There was a bed of coals on the hearth in the best room; Sylvia had
made a fire there before going over to her sister's, but it had
burned low. The glow of the coals and the smoky flare of the candle
lighted the room uncertainly, scattering and not dispelling the
shadows. There was a primly festive air in the room. The
flag-bottomed chairs stood by twos, finely canted towards each other,
against the wall; the one great hair-cloth rocker stood
ostentatiously in advance of them, facing the hearth fire; the long
level of the hair-cloth sofa gleamed out under stiff sweeps of the
white fringed curtains at the window behind it. The books on the
glossy card-table were set canting towards each other like the
chairs, and with their gilt edges towards the light. And Sylvia had
set also on the table a burnished pitcher of a rosy copper-color full
of apple blossoms.

She looked at it when she had set the candle on the shelf. It seemed
to her that all the light in the room centred on it, and it shone in