In her absence Vavasor found himself haunted with her face, her form, her voice, her music, and the uplifting influence she exercised upon him. It is possible for a man to fall in love with a woman he is centuries from being able to understand. But how the form of such a woman must be dwarfed in the camera of such a man’s mind. He is but a telescope turned wrong end upon her. If such a man could see such a woman after her true proportions, and not as the puppet he imagines her, thinking his own small great-things of her, he would not be able to love her at all. To see how he sees her—to get a glimpse of the shrunken creature he has to make her before he can get her through the proud door into the straightened cellar of his poor, pinched heart—would be enough in itself to keep any such woman from the possibility of falling in love with such a man. Hester knew that in some directions he was much undeveloped, but she thought she could help him. And had he thoroughly believed in and loved her, which he was not capable of doing, she could have helped him.

At length, in one of his brief communications, he mentioned that his yearly resurrection was at hand—a month of holiday. He must go northward, he said, to brace him for the heat of the autumn city. The memories of Burcliff drew him. He had an invitation to the opposite coast, which he thought he might accept instead. He did not know exactly where Yrndale lay, but if he found it within accessible distance, he hoped her parents would allow him to call some morning for an hour or two.

Hester answered that her father and mother would be glad to see him, and that if he were inclined to spend a day or two, there was a beautiful country to show him. If his holiday happened to coincide with Corney’s, perhaps they would come together.

By return mail came a grateful acceptance. About a week after, they heard from Cornelius that he could not take a holiday before November. He did not inform them that he had exchanged vacations with another clerk whose time fell in the undesirable month late in the year.

One lovely evening in the beginning of June, when her turn came to get away a little earlier, Amy Amber thought that she woud at last make an effort to find Miss Raymount. She learned the address from a directory and was now well-enough acquainted with London to know how to reach Addison Square.