As she drove out of the woods the sun was sinking beyond the cleft of the road, and a slow procession of shadows was moving across the broomsedge, where little waves of light quivered and disappeared and quivered again like ripples in running water. While she passed on, the expression of the landscape faded from tranquil brightness to the look of unresisting fortitude which it had worn as far back as she could remember. In her heart also she felt that the brightness quivered and died. With her drooping energy, weariness had crept over her; but out of weariness, she passed presently, like the country, into a mood of endurance. She realized, without despair, that the general aspect of her life would be one of unbroken monotony. Enthusiasm would not last. Energy would not last. Cheerfulness, buoyancy, interest, not one of these qualities would last as long as she needed it. Nothing would last through to the end except courage.
Her gaze was on the horizon. The reins, tied together with a bit of rope, were held loosely in her hands. With every turn of the wheel, a shower of dried mud was scattered over her clothes. So completely lost was she in memory that at first she barely heard the noise of an approaching rider, and the hollow sound of horseshoes striking on rock. Even before her mind became aware of Jason's approach, her startled senses leaped toward him. Her body bent for an instant, and then sprang back like a steel wire. With an impassive face, and a torment of memory in her heart, she sat staring far ahead, at the blur of road by the cabin. She was back again within the prison of that moment which was eternal; yet there was no sign of suffering in the blank look of her eyes. Her hand did not tremble; the loosened reins did not waver; and when a voice called her name, she did not reveal by the quiver of an eyelash that she listened.
"Dorinda! Dorinda, let me speak to you!"
She raised her eyes from the road and looked beyond the waving broomsedge to the topaz-coloured light on the western horizon. The longing to look in his face, to turn and rend him with her scorn, was as sharp as a blade; but some deep instinct told her that if she yielded to the impulse, the struggle was lost. To recognize his existence was to restore, in a measure, his power over her life. Only by keeping him outside her waking moments could she win freedom.
"Dorinda, you are hard. Dorinda——"
They were side by side now in the road. If he had reached out his hand, he could have touched her. If she had turned her head, she might have looked into his eyes. But she did not turn; she did not withdraw her gaze from the landscape; she did not relax in the weakest muscle from her attitude of unyielding disdain. Though he were to ride all the way home with her, she told herself, he could not force her to speak to him. No matter what he did, he could never make her speak to him or look at him again!
The sunken places in the road retarded him, and when he reached her side again, they were passing the burned cabin. For an instant, when they approached the fork, he hesitated, as if he were tempted to follow her still farther. Then, deciding abruptly, he wheeled about and alighted to open the red gate of Five Oaks.
"I'll see you again," he called back.
For a few minutes after he had disappeared, she sat rigidly erect, as if she had been frozen into her attitude of repulsion. Then, suddenly, she gave way; a shudder seized her limbs, and the reins slipped from her hands to the bottom of the buggy. She was like a person who has escaped some fearful calamity, and who has not realized the danger until it is over. When the trembling had passed, she stooped and picked up the reins. "It will be easier next time," she said, and a moment later, "I suppose I've got to get used to it. You can get used to anything if you have to." A dull misery stupefied her thoughts, and she was without clear perception of what the meeting had meant to her. "I can't understand why I suffer so," she pondered. "I can't understand how a person you despise can make you so unhappy."
As she drew nearer home, Dan quickened his pace, and the buggy rattled over the bridge and up the rocky slope to the stable. The glow had faded from the west, and the long white house glimmered through the twilight, which was settling like silver dust over the landscape. A banner of smoke drooped low over a single chimney. Beyond the roof the budding trees appeared as diaphanous as mist against the greenish-blue of the sky. In the window of the west wing a lamp was shining. So she had seen it on innumerable evenings in the past; so she would see it, if she lived, on innumerable evenings in the future.