Its chief
advantage was that it seemed quite too stagnant to be anything but
respectable, and the suppressed grumbling of the old shrew whom they
routed out confirmed their estimate. She didn't approve of couples who
dragged God-fearing old women out of bed at unholy hours in the
morning, and it was only the generous tip from Stillman and the
assurance that he intended looking elsewhere for quarters for himself
that reconciled her to her loss of sleep and the compromise with her
convictions.
For a good half-hour Claire sat with folded hands peering out from her
room upon the damp hillside to the west. From across the street came the
bawdy thumping of a mechanical piano and the swish of a sluggish tide.
Her encounter with Sawyer Flint had forced the door of her virginal
seclusion and thrust her at once into the primitive and elemental open.
She felt like one who was coming out of voluntary exile to the pathos of
a deferred heritage. Before her stretched the eagle's horizon, but she
had only the fledgling's strength of wing. She longed for the faith and
courage and daring to take life at its word, longed with all the
dangerous fierceness of one who had fed too long upon the husks of
existence. And, longing, she fell asleep, sitting in a chair before the
open window, without thought or preparation....
* * * * *
The morning broke cloudless.
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