"Then I reckon you'd better mix a batch of dough and feed the turkeys," he replied, and touching her shoulder with his hat- brim, he went hurriedly out of doors.
When he had disappeared beyond the last clump of shrubbery bordering the drive, she remembered the lantern she had left hanging in the barn, and, going to look for it, carried it upstairs to her room. In the afternoon, however, it occurred to her that Christopher would probably need the light by evening, and swinging the handle over her arm, she set out across the newly ploughed fields toward the Blake cottage. The stubborn rustic pride which would keep him from returning to the Hall aroused in her a frank, almost tender amusement. She had long ago wearied of the trivial worldliness of life; in the last few years the shallowness of passion had seemed its crowning insult, and over the absolute sincerity of her own nature the primal emotion she had heard in Christopher's voice exerted a compelling charm. The makeshift of a conventional marriage had failed her utterly; her soul had rejected the woman's usual cheap compromise with externals; and in her almost puritan scorn of the vanities by which she was surrounded she had attained the moral elevation which comes to those who live by an inner standard of purity rather than by outward forms. In the largeness of her nature there had been small room for regret or for wasted passion, and until her meeting with Christopher on the day of her homecoming he had existed in her imagination only as a bright and impossible memory. Now, as she went rapidly forward along the little path that edged the field, she found herself wondering if, after all, she had worn unconsciously his ideal as an armour against the petty temptations and the sudden melancholies of the last six years.
As she neared the fence that divided the two farms she saw him walking slowly along a newly turned furrow, and when he looked up she lifted the lantern and waved it in the air. Quickening his steps, he swung himself over the rail fence with a single bound, and came to where she stood amid a dried fringe of last summer's yarrow.
"So you are none the worse for the night in the barn?" he asked anxiously.
"Why, I dreamed the most beautiful dreams," she replied, "and I had the most perfect sleep in the world."
"Then the mice kept away?"
"At least they didn't wake me."
"I stayed within call until sunrise," he said quietly. "You were not afraid?"
Her rare smile shone suddenly upon him, illumining the delicate pallor of her face. "I knew that you were there," she answered.
For a moment he gazed steadily into her eyes, then with a decisive movement he took the lantern from her hand and turned as though about to go back to his work.