Katrine: A Novel

by Elinor Macartney Lane

Across the distance she had covered their eyes met. The slim little figure in the black frock outlined against the blue of the sky, the wind blowing the pines over her head, her dusky hair holding the sun, her skirts, pushed backward by the wind, revealing her childish body full of exquisite vitality. The tears stood big in her eyes, but hers was a soldier's courage, the courage to face defeat, a thing goodly to see in man or woman. Hastily she untied the scarlet kerchief she wore around her throat and waved it to him, high, at arm's-length, like a flag of victory.

"Ah, don't worry! It's all right!" she called. "Don't think about me! Good-bye!"

At the back of the lodge, down by the brook, there was a place shut in by bushes and roofed over by boughs, where she had often before hidden her grief. Reaching this leafy room, she threw herself on the pine-needles, moving her head from side to side as if in physical pain. There was shame mixed with the grief. Remembered

endearments came back to her; his head had lain on her bosom one night when she had tried to ease his pain by her small, cool hands. The place burned over her heart, and she pressed her hand to her side as though to stanch a wound.

If there had been another reason for his conduct, she thought, any reason save the one he gave! If a father had forbidden marriage between them, or if he had feared the anger of his mother, her pride, at least, would not have suffered. But he had made it clear, "damnably clear," as he has stated it, that the only obstacle to his marrying her was his own will.

But he had suffered, too. She had seen him white and haggard with longing for her, and she knew pretence too well to doubt that thus far she was the supreme attraction in his life. The thing that hung black over all was the unchangeableness of the cause of her trouble. She could never be anything but Katrine Dulany; he had decided that she was not worthy to become Katrine Ravenel. Wherein, then, did these Ravenels excel? Her rebellious Irish heart put questions for her clear head to answer. Were they a generous, high-minded, clear-souled people? Folk-tales, passed by word of mouth, of the ill doings of Francis sixth, as well as Francis

fifth of the name, told her they were not. Certain dusky faces with the Ravenel mouth and chin had spoken to her of a moral code before which her clean soul stood abashed. Were they more intelligent, more dignified, more refined? The narrow-mindedness of them answered these questionings in the negative. Were they; and here that self-belief, which seems placed like a shell to protect all genius, entered its own, demanding; were they of the specially gifted, as she knew herself to be?

But through the turmoil of heated thought one idea became fixed, however. She must leave Carolina and work; determinedly, doggedly; work to save her reason. Unformulated plans were taking shape in her mind even while she sobbed forth her grief. If she could but study, she thought!

"There must"—and here she spoke aloud, her hands clinched in the pine-needles—"must, must be found some way to do it!"

And by some curious mental twist, as she made the resolution, there came back to her the words of some old reading: