JAMIE stood in Margaret Cameron’s back door and called cheerfully: “Oh, neighbour, where have you been for the past fifty years?”

Margaret Cameron stepped to the living-room door and braced herself with a hand on each side of the casing, and Jamie was shocked to the depths. He found himself crossing the room in a sweep and catching her in his arms.

“Oh,Margaret!” he cried. “Margaret!”

He held her from him and looked at her, and her face was the face of a stricken woman. She was there. She seemed all right herself. There was only one thing to think.

“Lolly?” he questioned. “What happened to your girl?”

Margaret Cameron opened her mouth but no words came. Jamie helped her to a chair and rushed to the kitchen for a glass of water. Then he knelt on one knee beside her and took both her hands and stared at her with questioning eyes.

“Tell me, friend of mine,” he urged. “Tell me what I can do for you. Where can I go? Whom can I get?”

Slowly the woman shook her head, and at last her voice ​Page:The Keeper of the Bees.pdf/449 ​Page:The Keeper of the Bees.pdf/450 ​Page:The Keeper of the Bees.pdf/451 ​Page:The Keeper of the Bees.pdf/452 ​Page:The Keeper of the Bees.pdf/453 ​Page:The Keeper of the Bees.pdf/454 ​Page:The Keeper of the Bees.pdf/455 ​Page:The Keeper of the Bees.pdf/456 ​Page:The Keeper of the Bees.pdf/457 ​Page:The Keeper of the Bees.pdf/458 ​Page:The Keeper of the Bees.pdf/459 ​Page:The Keeper of the Bees.pdf/460 ​Page:The Keeper of the Bees.pdf/461 ​Page:The Keeper of the Bees.pdf/462 ​Page:The Keeper of the Bees.pdf/463 ​Page:The Keeper of the Bees.pdf/464 ​surged up the strongest, in his heart came a great, throbbing, gushing, overwhelming sense of relief. However she had lied, with whatever motive she had deceived him, one big fact remained on Jamie's horizon. The Storm Girl had fulfilled his thought of her. He had not felt that a woman with sage in her hair and sand verbena and primroses rising like an incense around her knees, her midnight garments trailing in them, he had not thought that the hair of silk binding across his face, that the physical strength, the quick assurance of speech, he had not thought that these things possibly could be coupled with a shame woman. He had been ready to accept any excuse, to believe anything. Now there was nothing to believe except that there had been a lie—but, after all, there had been lies in the world that were rather magnificent. There was just a bare possibility that this lie, that this thing that had been done, had a reason backing it that he might be willing to countenance. So Jamie spent largely of his days and somewhat of his nights torn by conflicting emotions.