In the three-year interval much else had happened. Vance had read and studied, new avenues of knowledge had opened to him, linking together many unrelated facts, and Miss Lorburn's library was now less interesting in itself than because of the sad woman who had lived there. Sad, but not shrunken. He looked up at her, and she looked down with her large full-orbed eyes, the eyes of one who has renounced but not repined… . What a subject, if he could do it! He dropped again into the highbacked armchair where he had sat on that first day. "This is the Past—if only I could get back into it… ." She must have been lovely when she was young, with a sharp austere loveliness like Halo's; her long thin hands full of gifts for someone, or else stretched out empty to receive. No one, apparently, had wanted to give her anything, or to receive what she offered; yet instead of withering she had ripened. Her books, and some inner source of life, had kept her warm—he wondered how? And suddenly a queer idea came to him: the idea that Halo Tarrant knew. Was the fancy suggested by some resemblance in their features, or a likeness in expression, something about the eyes and hands? Halo had those same hands, long, like her face, and opening wide when she held them out to you, as if ready to receive or give, while her eyes questioned which it was to be. Yet Halo was married, had presumably fulfilled her destiny… . And so, perhaps, had the other woman in her different way. That was what explained the likeness—or else made it all the more obscure… . The afternoon shadows wheeled unnoticed across the lawn. Vance continued to sit motionless, letting the secret forces move within him. Whenever he could surrender to his creative fervour it always ended by carrying him to the mysterious point where effort ceased, and he seemed just to have to hold his breath and watch.

He watched… .

When he got home, Laura Lou said why'd he been gone so long, and her mother was fretting, and would he go upstairs right away and tell her everything was all right? He stared at her out of his dream, as if she had spoken an unknown language. "Oh, yes—all right … everything's all right… ." That night he sat up late, writing, writing… .