She watched the graceful, pretty child until she vanished through the
door. Slowly she walked to the window. Hands clasped behind her she
stood, gazing across the sunlit lawn--across the dancing, flashing waters
of the Sound. A big, black schooner, a mountain of bellying whiteness
superimposed upon a tiny streak of hull, was standing off for the Long
Island shore. Her eyes followed it.

Blake, lids half closed, as a man who seeks within the denseness of
masculine brain for something that lieth not therein, considered for a
long moment, eyes upon the perfect figure of perfect womanhood before
him. At length he spoke.

"It doesn't seem to me," he began, "that it means either very much or
very little." He went on, more lightly: "Two months isn't such a long
time, you know, after all. He'll soon be back, laden with honors. And
then, because he was raised on the seacoast and doesn't know the
difference between a Lima bean and a bole weevil, they'll probably make
him Secretary of Agriculture."

She was still gazing at the vanishing sail; she had not heard his words.

He leaned back in his chair, a little, watching her. At length he sighed,
and murmured to himself:

"To him that hath, shall be given all they can take away from him that
hathn't."