“I wonder …” Christina was thinking of Cornelius, who hated to let her take hold wherever real decisions, even about storm windows, must be made.

She felt Eben’s eyes resting on her and looked up to meet his piercing glance, which since their first meeting had seemed to probe her in a rather relentless way, just because the focus was so sharp.

“Don’t,” she said, putting a hand over her eyes.

“Don’t what?”

“Don’t look at me like that.”

“Can’t I be bold enough to try to see you, Christina—the real you—now we are so old and wise, you tell me? May not wisdom look at beauty in peace at last?”

“Ridiculous man!” Christina smiled, but she felt a queer pain in her heart—too absurd.

Eben got up and paced up and down, his characteristic action when he was moved or thinking hard.

“When you came that first time—and I have been chewing over every word ever since, you must imagine—we touched on the subject of the strength of women in Willard. It is, perhaps, to be the theme of that chapter of the history?”

“I feel awfully confused at the moment, Eben—in a whirlpool of facts and intuitions—nothing sorted out. Susie Plummer came the other day and regaled us about the missionaries. There is a tribe in itself!”

But Eben seemed not to be listening. He was off on one of his private tangents, she sensed, and she waited, stimulated, excited by the liveliness of this mind at work, by the something fiery and original in this old man. He was not judicious like Cornelius, or even, perhaps, wise in the way of Cornelius. His quality was mercurial, intuitive. His mind ranged about in a large orbit of speculation, she felt. He looked now like an old hawk. There was, she realized, no kindness in the way he looked at her—the probing look that had made her blush. No, it was the look of a hawk.

“Ever since you were here—some weeks ago, Christina …”

She caught the shade of bitterness in his voice.

“I wanted to come, but the days flow by in a timeless river of keeping Cornelius and me going. It is a full-time job, Eben.”