"Oh, don't you believe me?" she cried, "can't you see that it is true?"

And yet he could only hold her there at arm's length with that new and
strange reverence in his face. He was not worthy to touch her, but still
she loved him.

The flush had faded from the eastern sky, and the faintest border of
yellow light betrayed the ragged outlines of the mountain as they walked
together to the tannery house.

Millicent, in the kitchen, was making great preparations--for Millicent.
Miss Skinner was a person who had hitherto laid it down as a principle of
life to pay deference or do honor to no human made of mere dust, like
herself. Millicent's exception; if Cynthia had thought about it, was a
tribute of no mean order. Cynthia, alas, did not think about it: she did
not know that, in her absence, the fire had not been lighted in the
evening, Jethro supping on crackers and milk and Milly partaking of the
evening meal at home. Moreover, Miss Skinner had an engagement with a
young man. Cynthia saw the fire, and threw off her sealskin coat which
Mr. and Mrs. Merrill had given her for Christmas, and took down the
saucepan from the familiar nail on which it hung. It was a miraculous
fact, for which she did not attempt to account, that she was almost
happy: happy, indeed, in comparison to that which had been her state
since the afternoon before. Millicent snatched the saucepan angrily from
her hand.

"What be you doin', Cynthy?" she demanded.

Such was Miss Skinner's little way of showing deference. Though deference
is not usually vehement, Miss Skinner's was very real, nevertheless.