"I mean, the way I imagine it. How things were in the days when this house was built. I don't know how to explain … but I think I see a big subject for a novel—different from the things the other fellows are trying for. What interests me would be to get back into the minds of the people who lived in these places—to try and see what we came out of. Till I do I'll never understand why we are what we are… ." He paused, breathless with the attempt to formulate his problem. "But I guess it won't do," he began again. "I don't know enough about those old times. I think there are good things in what I've done, though … the beginning's good, anyway. See here," he broke out, "I wish you'd let me read it to you; will you?"

Hesitations and scruples had fallen from him. He forgot that he had been found where he had no right to be, and the probable consequences—forgot the possibility of Halo Tarrant's disapproval, was hardly aware of her presence even, save as a listener to what he thirsted to have heard. She nodded and leaned back in her chair; and gathering up the sheets he began.

His elocution was probably not much better than when he had recited his poems to her on Thundertop. But he did not think of that till he had started; and after the first paragraph he was swept on by the new emotion of watching his vision take shape in another mind. Such a thing had never happened to him, and before he had read a page he was vibrating with the sense of her exquisite participation. What his imagination had engendered was unfolding and ripening in hers; whatever her final judgment was, it would be as if his own mind had judged him.

As his self-possession returned, the enjoyment of her actual presence was added to the intellectual excitement. Everything about her seemed to be listening and understanding, from the attentive droop of her lids to the repressed eagerness of her lips and the hands folded quietly on her knee. When he had ended he turned away abruptly, as though she might see even the heart thumping in his throat. He threw the manuscript down, and his self-confidence crumbled.

Mrs. Tarrant did not speak. She merely unclasped her hands, and then laid one over the other again, without otherwise moving. To Vance the silence seemed abysmal. He turned back and almost shouted at her: "Well, it's no earthly good, is it?"

She looked up. "It's going to be by far the best thing you've done." Her voice sounded rich with restrained emotion. "I can't tell you how strange the feeling is—all those dull familiar things with their meaning given back to them… ."

"Oh, is that what I've done? You see—you do see?"