"Well, I guess your father's going to be later than ever tonight, and that Slovak girl says she won't stay another week if she don't ever know what time to dish up for meals," Mrs. Weston murmured, looking up from her towel-hemming as her son entered.

"Well, Vance's got a letter from a New York magazine," Pearl exulted, disregarding her mother.

Mrs. Scrimser looked yearningly from the corner where she sat by her husband, the last number of Spirit Light on her knee. ("What your grandmother wastes, subscribing to all those come-to-Jesus papers, is something that passes me. She could hire a nurse with the money," Mrs. Weston frequently lamented to her children.)

"Oh, Vanny, open it quick!" his grandmother besought. "I wonder if it's from Spirit Light? I was just reading to Grandpa about a twenty-five dollar prize they're offering for a five-hundred-word appreciation of Jesus Christ, to be sent in before the last of the month. What are we now?"

No one answered, and Vance went up to the lamp and opened his letter. Below the letterhead of The Hour a rush of words poured out at him. "Another story on the lines of 'One Day' … Review in new hands … editor would like to have first call on anything you may turn out during the coming year … Liberal terms … first story if possible in time for January number … wants to know if any chance of your being in New York within few weeks to consider possibility of permanent connection with review … "

Another story on the lines of "One Day"—that was what first struck him. He read the phrase over several times; then, involuntarily, he turned and glanced at the marionette with its wires cut that cowered in the armchair by the radiator. How strange it was, Vance mused—that poor creature had first taught him the meaning of pain, and out of the terrible lesson the means of deliverance had come!

His future … here was his future secure. And the people at The Hour regretted having lost sight of him for so long—and the review was in new hands! He glanced back at the letterhead, and saw: "Editor: Lewis Tarrant." But surely that was the blond fellow who was always hanging about Miss Spear and going off in the motor with her? Correspondence between Paul's Landing and Mapledale Avenue had ceased after a somewhat acrimonious exchange of letters at the time of Vance's departure from the Tracys'; since then he had heard nothing of the household at Eaglewood. Two or three curt notes from the editorial office of The Hour, rejecting the tales and essays he had sent at Frenside's suggestion, had been the last of his communications with New York; and for nearly two years now his horizon had been so shut in by Euphoria that he was beginning to feel as if he had never left there.