Page:The Star in the Window.pdf/313



ATHAN was on his way to Professor Heckelman's rooms when he stopped at the general delivery window to inquire for mail, some four weeks later. He put the letter that the clerk passed to him hastily into his coat-pocket, and five minutes afterward read it by the light of an illuminated drugstore window.

Professor Heckelman waited in vain for Nathan that night, and Mrs. Barton waited until after twelve o'clock.

Nathan hardly knew what streets he tramped as he grappled with the staggering revelations in that letter of Rebecca's. What did she say? "Address her next time as Mrs. Nathaniel Cawthorne?" "Wearing his ring?" "Using his name?" Those opening sentences had elated Nathan at first. She wasn't then evading her marriage vows! He hadn't then labored in vain to make his name more worthy to be borne by her! A wave of joy had flooded over him. Reading on, however, that wave receded gradually, drew away from him, left him cold and shivering finally. "Doing what she ought to do!" "Seemed the only right thing!" "Bound by law!" "Her duty!" Oh, all that recalled so vividly to Nathaniel Cawthorne the martyrlike attitude of the brave woman up there in the tarpaper covered shack on the edge of the Maine woods that he shuddered at the similarity. It was his mother's submissive eyes that Nathan saw when he read