Yet, even then, as Rachael Gregory admitted to herself months
later, there had been a cloud in the sky--a cloud so tiny and so
vague that for many days she had been able to banish it in the
flooding sunshine all about her whenever it crossed her vision.

But it was there, and after a while other tiny clouds came to bear
it company, and to make a formidable shadow that all her
philosophy could not drive away. Philosophy is not the bride's
natural right; the honeymoon is a time of unreason; a crumpled
rose-leaf in those first uncertain weeks may loom larger than all
the far more serious storms of the years to come.

Rachael, loving at last, was overwhelmed, intoxicated, carried
beyond all sanity by the passion that possessed her.

When Warren Gregory came to find her at Quaker Bridge on that
unforgettable morning after the storm, a chance allusion to Mrs.
Valentine, the charming unknown lady with the gray hair, had
distracted Rachael's thoughts from the point at issue. But later
on, during the long drive, she had remembered it again.

"But Greg, dear, did you tell me that you and Doctor Valentine
drove down yesterday in all that frightful storm?"

"No, no, of course not, my child; we came down late the night
before--why, yesterday we couldn't get as far as the gate! Mrs.
Valentine's brother was there, and we played thirty-two rubbers of
bridge! Sweet situation, you two miles away, and me held up after
three months of waiting!"