CHAPTER V

SEEING JOAN HOME

They walked home slowly, Wint and Joan. The moon was bright upon them; the streets were still filled with the dispersing throng. People spoke to them, then went discreetly on their way, and smiled back at the two. Wint and Joan said little; and what they said was of no importance. He told her he had seen her crying.

“I had to,” she said. “I was so happy.”

“I wasn’t happy,” Wint declared. “I was scared.”

She said she didn’t blame him. “It must have been hard to face them all.”

He nodded. “I’ll tell you; all that noise.... It--made me seasick. Something like that.”

“I know,” she said.

When they were halfway home, she told him that Hetty had come to her, that morning. Wint looked at her quickly.

“Hetty’s all right,” he said. “She’ll be all right. She’s found herself.”

Joan nodded. “It’s going to be a fight, for her.”

“She’ll win. Sam will help.”

“I know. I saw that, this morning.”

A little later, she said: “You--did the right thing. Foolish, maybe. But--it was fine, too. Foolish things often are.”

Wint shook his head. “But I’d like to pound Routt.”

“Don’t,” she said. “Agnes loves him.”

Wint told her then what Amos had told him; and she uttered a low, pitiful exclamation. “I didn’t know that,” she said. “But--they may be happy. Agnes is good.... Loyal.... In her way.”

“You knew she loved him?”

“Yes. I’ve always known. Agnes had talked to me.”

“I hope Routt does--settle down.”

Joan said thoughtfully: “There is something strong in him. Misdirected.”

“I liked him,” Wint said. “I can’t help it, even now. He was my friend.”

“I believe they will come out all right. I feel it.”

Wint laughed at her gently. “Intuition?”

“Yes. You men call it a hunch.”

Silence again, for a while. They came to her house. Wint thought the simple place was beautiful in the moonlight; he wanted, desperately, to go in. But there was a curious diffidence upon him, and he stopped at the gate till she said:

“Come. It’s not cold, to-night. We can sit on the porch.”

“You want me?”

“Yes, Wint.” Her eyes said more than her words. He opened the gate, and they went up the walk to the house sedately enough, side by side. Any one might have seen.

The moonlight did not fall upon the porch. There was a shadowed place there. When they came into this shadow, Joan stopped, and looked at Wint. Her eyes were very dark. Something was pounding in his throat, so that he could not speak. He put out one hand, in an uncertain, fumbling way. Joan looked down at his hand, and smiled a little, and put her hand in his.

They stood thus for a little, hand in hand, facing each other. Wint said huskily, at last:

“I’ve--tried, Joan.”

Her voice was clear and sweet as a bell when she answered. “You’ve done more than try, Wint,” she told him. “You’ve--won.”

So, without either of them knowing, or caring, how it happened, she was in his arms. And he kissed her; and her lips answered his. No cool kiss of a child, this. Months of longing and of yearning spoke through his lips, and through hers. Infinite promise of the years to come....

While they sat together on her shadowed porch thereafter, they could hear for a long time the murmuring voices of people passing on their homeward way. Some looked toward Joan’s house; but they could not see Wint and Joan.

It was as well; for it is the way of Hardiston to talk. The way of a little town....

THE END

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