Part Four - Marise's Coming-of-Age

The old house, silent under the stars, lay quiet in its vigil about her,
but slept no more than she; the old house which had been a part of her
childhood and her youth now watched over her entry into another part of
her journey.

For as she lay there, wide-awake, watching the light of the candle, she
felt that she knew what was waiting for her, what she must go to find.
It was her maturity.

And as she lay quiet, her ears ringing in the solemn hush which Neale's
look and voice had laid about her, she felt slowly coming into her, like
a tide from a great ocean, the strength to go forward. She lay still,
watching the candle-flame, hovering above the wick which tied it to the
candle, reaching up, reaching up, never for a moment flagging in that
transmutation of the dead matter below it, into something shining and
alive.

She felt the quiet strength come into her like a tide. And presently, as
naturally as a child wakes in the morning, refreshed, and feels the
impulse to rise to active effort again, she sat up in bed, folded her
arms around her knees, and began to think.

Really to think this time, not merely to be the helpless battle-field
over which hurtling projectiles of fierce emotions passed back and
forth! She set her life fairly there before her, and began to try to
understand it.