She had long known that he would ask this; she had long gotten ready what
she would say; but in the struggle between their wills, she had been
unaccountably embarrassed, she had blundered, and he had left rather
strengthened than weakened in his determination.
But she must prevent the marriage; her mind was more resolute than ever as
to that.
Slowly she reached the doorstep of the cabin, a roughly hewn log, and
turning, stood there with her bonnet in her hand, her white figure outlined
before the doorway, slender and still.
The sun had set. Night was rushing on over the awful land. The wolf-dog, in
his kennel behind the house, rose, shook himself at his chain, and uttered a
long howl that reached away to the dark woods--the darker for the vast
pulsing yellow light that waved behind them in the west like a gorgeous soft
aerial fan. As the echoes died out from the peach orchard came the song of a
robin, calling for love and rest.
Then from another direction across the clearing another sound reached her:
the careless whistle of the major, returning from his day's work in the
field. When she heard that, her face took on the expression that a woman
sometimes comes to wear when she has accepted what life has brought her
although it has brought her nothing for which she cares; and her lips opened
with an unconscious sigh of weariness--the weariness that has been gathering
weariness for years and that runs on in weariness through the future.
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