The keen black eyes took in something of this, as it shadowed momentarily the lined, tortured face of the wife of Paul Judson. Mary Judson had grown old, older than the soft gray of her hair and the gray prints around her mouth indicated: old with the timeless age of torn illusions and murdered dreams: old with the age that the same three years had brought to Stella Cole.
"No'm, Miss' Mary.... Yassum, dat is.... Ah'se movin'."
A spasm of pity smoothed the mistress' drawn cheeks, as she felt gripped by the roughened brownish face, gnarled by its helpless acceptance of the death of hope. "Do you.... Have you found a house, Stella? Do you know where you're going?"
"Yessum. Ah knows whar Ah'se gwine."
"And you're going——"
"Home, Miss' Mary."
"Home?"
"Yessum...." Feeling that more was required, her face wrinkled with an old shy eagerness. "To Macon, Miss' Mary; Macon, Georgy. Whar me 'n' Tom comed f'um, afore we done moved to Atlanta.... Afore we done come here."
"We'll hate to lose you from the mountain, Stella."
"Yessum." She recrossed her hands uneasily, and straightened up from the table against which her hip had swayed for its solid rest.