"Not for me, thank you!"
"Where are you going?"
"Just for a little walk. It's not good for you to be out after sundown!" he called back as he went off.
She lay in the hammock very still a long while. The frogs far off were iterating their hoarse melancholy. Was it a belated firefly that flickered dejectedly in the chill air? An oppression settled down on her chest, but she never felt it for the greater weight on her heart. She pressed her two hands tight over her face, that the servants might not hear her crying.
"To think that this should be me," she said to herself, in a kind of excitement, "when I meant to be so happy! After all"—she sat up and steadied herself as she swayed—"it's very wonderful to have found life so much better, and so much worse, than anybody ever said. If only Ethan and I could go through the hard places by ourselves, if only there were no one else—oh, God, if only there were no one else!"
She lay back again in the hammock. By-and-by a noise in the house: Ethan putting quick questions, several servants speaking at once, then Ethan's voice, sharp with anxiety, calling:
"Val! Val!"
"Yes, out here."
Hastily she dried her face.