But when the Alstons had gone, trundling away in their chaise for the hour's drive to Rose Hill, he had not come. She lit all the tapers downstairs, so that the house might blaze with welcoming light. It was not yet too late to hope. Though most horsemen would not brave strange roads in the dark, Meme was different. How many strange dark roads he had traveled! She thought of the expedition. How little she knew of the other part of his life! She had asked him nothing of the great and successful adventure during their brief unhappy interview in Richmond. It would be different now. They would have leisure to talk. Just to talk, she thought. He is my friend: no longer lover. I don't want that, nor does he. Now that he has acknowledged his injustice—I can talk to him about Father. He will help me, tell me what to do now. The joy of speaking of Aaron to Merne! Of receiving sympathy and help, where there had once been bitter hostility. She clasped her hands hard against her chest. Oh, why doesn't he come!

She sat down to write to Aaron, but tonight words crept slowly. She dared not write, yet, of the matter which was consuming her heart. After Meme had come, she would tell Aaron, make him understand that Merne had changed; she would at last melt bitterness from between those two. But tonight she could not write.

She had made a map, a rough, inaccurate sketch, worked out from such maps as she could find, of his probable journey. If only she knew more details! If he had left St. Louis, then—he must be here now, or here. She made tiny marks on the paper. Wabasha had said he would follow the Natchez Trace into Tennessee, then Nashville, and down through the northeast corner of Georgia into Carolina. She could not be sure of the route, and there might be any number of hazards to cause delay. Her own journey West had taught her that.

The hall clock struck midnight before she dragged herself reluctantly up to her room. 'Tomorrow, then,' she told herself. 'He said mid-October and this is only the twenty-third. It is folly to expect him yet.'

She snuffed her candle. That night she dreamed of him. He was standing beside the mighty river; the sound of its rushing waters deafened her ears. As she came to him, he held out his arms, and she felt his kiss with a rapture greater than any she had ever known. 'I knew you'd come to me,' she said, laughing, and turned without surprise to see her father with them, too. He was young and smiling, as he had been in the days at Richmond Hill. 'Now I am happy,' she told them, and, though her voice was lost in the roar of the flood, she saw that they understood.