developed now? Had this love which had come to her brought her any nearer
to the unknown realm of light she craved?...




CHAPTER XI

Though December had come, Sunday was like an April day before whose
sunlight the night-mists of scruples and morbid fears were scattered and
dispersed. And Janet, as she fared forth from the Fillmore Street flat,
felt resurging in her the divine recklessness that is the very sap of
life. The future, save of the immediate hours to come, lost its power
over her. The blue and white beauty of the sky proclaimed all things
possible for the strong; and the air was vibrant with the sweet music of
bells, calling her to happiness. She was going to meet happiness, to meet
love--to meet Ditmar! The trolley which she took in Faber Street, though
lagging in its mission, seemed an agent of that happiness as it left the
city behind it and wound along the heights beside the tarvia roadway
above the river, bright glimpses of which she caught through the openings
in the woods. And when she looked out of the window on her right she
beheld on a little forested rise a succession of tiny "camps" built by
residents of Hampton whose modest incomes could not afford more elaborate
summer places; camps of all descriptions and colours, with queer names
that made her smile: "The Cranny," "The Nook," "Snug Harbour," "Buena
Vista,"--of course,--which she thought pretty, though she did not know
its meaning; and another, in German, equally perplexing, "Klein aber
Mein." Though the windows of these places were now boarded up, though the
mosquito netting still clung rather dismally to the porches, they were
mutely suggestive of contentment and domestic joy.