And she went on. Sometimes a wild desire to run swept over her, but she would not hasten her steps, and she would not look behind. The primeval terror of the forest pressed upon her, but she cast it away. Alone, lost, in darkness and solitude, she kept her hold upon the one thing that mattered—the honor and dignity of her own soul.
“I’m not afraid,” she said.
And then she saw a light. At first she thought it was the moon, but it hung too low, and it was too brilliant. Even then she would not run. She went on steadily toward it. In a few minutes she stepped out of the woodland upon a road—a hard, asphalt road with lights along it. It was[Pg 342] quite empty, it was unfamiliar to her, but she would have gone down on her knees and kissed the dust of it. It was a road, and all roads lead home.
XV
There were no stars and no moon, for the sky was filled with wild black clouds flying before the wind. Lexy could not guess at the time. She had no idea where she was, but it didn’t matter. The morning would come some time, and the road would lead somewhere.
“It’s better here,” she said to herself. “I’d far, far rather be here, wherever it is, than shut up in that room with the thoughts I had!”
Those thoughts, those fears, had utterly gone from her now, but the memory of them was horrible. She shuddered at the memory of the hours she had spent locked in her room, with that monstrous dread of madness in her heart. Thank God, it had passed now! She walked along the interminable empty road, her old self again, but graver and sterner than she had ever been before in her life.
“I’ve got to understand all this,” she said to herself. “I’ve got to know what’s been the matter with me. That breakdown at the Queltons’, that awful time yesterday afternoon, and this! I suppose I’ve been walking in my sleep. I never did before. Something’s gone wrong with my nerves, terribly wrong; and I’ve got to find out why.”
She quickened her pace a little, because a trace of the old panic fear had stirred in her.
“It’s over!” she thought. “I’ll never imagine such a thing again; but I wonder if I’ll ever feel quite sure of myself again!”