Her own sentence beat and hammered into Sard's brain until it seemed as if she had done something wrong. So, sometimes, suspicion and influence can put guilt on a clean creature! Under the strange half-awakeness, the half-conscious struggles of a full-grown woman coming to life, before her there suddenly rose the Gorgon face of Society, of the thing called actual life. It turned her young heart and body to stone. The looks and words of Sard's father had been unmistakable; they had made her warm-hearted interest in the Man on the Place, the slow sense of delighted companionship, the mysterious attraction and trust, something shameful!
"As if I had done something wrong! As if I had done something wrong!"
Sard turned miserably, staring up at the sky. With the fairness, the willingness to face things peculiar to her, she could in a measure understand her father's anger and sense of outrage. The girl hardly rebelled against this, unjust as it was, but her helplessness with her own problem, the impossibility of proceeding on this strange and rare path without shame and mud-flinging, for the very path itself became evident to her.
She remembered Miss Aurelia's twittering and misgivings when once or twice she had gone to read with Colter on a bench under the horse-chestnut tree. She remembered Tawny Troop's cheap scorn; she had been "made ashamed."
Even Watts Shipman, it seemed, had had misgivings. He, too, had endeavored to "make her think," and now it was out. There was no hiding it, no possible explanation; she cared for Colter, cared for him with the marvelous gleaming tide, the dewy garden-like rapture, the vivid, etched, romantic stir and storm of a girl's first feeling. It was out; known, discussed, condemned and made shameful. The scarlet flame that had stained Sard's face brought a blazing fire of pride into her heart. Boldly she cast imagination and self-will on this fire of pride.
"I care," she breathed. "I care. It is my life, not theirs! I will go before them all with Colter and say—'I care'!"
The gray twilight grew darker in its language and breathed down to sleep. Roses emptied tiny jars of scent on the night. Lilies burned tall pastilles. Leaves pressed their little hands together in some prayer of darkness. Now and then some small thing like a clock stirred in the long grass near Sard and tried to remind her of time and obligations, but the woe of the whole youthful frame meant nothing to them. They went on in their little ticking way, busy and inevitable.
These things did, however, mean unutterable emotions to the man who came suddenly upon them, who viewed them pitifully in the long grass where long ago the fire-flies had begun to rise and glimmer. To the startled, half-rising girl's face, Colter half groaned. Quickly he tempered his voice and manner. He, it seemed, was in no passion of resentment, and he sought to quell hers.
"I thought I saw you go in here—I waited a long time for you to come out." Colter hesitated. "I wanted to say 'good-bye' before I went. Do you know how late it is?"