"But Grandfather won't let me go. He likes to see me about the
house, he says, and I read the papers to him morning and evening. It
does me good, he considers, to 'make a sacrifice and pay deference
to those whose time is almost up.' So here I am, tied to the
shadows, a prisoner till Mother comes back--a woman of eighteen
forced to behave like a good little girl treated as if I were still
content to amuse myself with dolls and picture books! But the fire
is smolderin Alice, and one fine day it will burst into flame."


A shaft of sunlight found its way through the branches of a chestnut
tree and danced suddenly upon the envelope into which Joan had
sealed up this little portion of her overcharged vitality. Through
the open windows of her more than ample room with its Colonial four-
post bed, dignified tallboys, stiff chairs and anemic engravings of
early-Victorianism, all the stir and murmur of the year's youth came
to Joan.

If her eyes had not been turned inward and her ears had not been
tuned only to catch her own natural complaints, this chatter of
young things would have called her out to laugh and tingle and dance
in the haunted wood and cry out little incoherent welcomes to the
children of the earth. Something of the joy and emotion of that
mother-month must have stirred her imagination and set her blood
racing through her young body. She felt the call of youth and the
urge to play. She sensed the magnetic pull of the voice of spring,
but when, with her long brown lashes wet with impatient tears, she
went to the window and looked out at the green spread of lawn and
the yellow-headed daffodils, it seemed more than ever to her that