With a gasp of astonishment Amos "got" him. But the captain, however efficacious his cure, was mistaken in his diagnosis. He believed Amos to be lazy as well as idle.
CHAPTER XXX
FETZER DELIVERS A SERMON
Fetzer did not sleep well the night before Ellen returned to college, nor had she slept well for several preceding nights. More than once during the past ten days she had been astonished, not by Ellen, but by her admired Dr. Lanfair, who on warm evenings took Ellen riding in his small car.
They rode along the pleasant river or on smooth country roads. On the outward journey, companioned by the setting sun, they talked. What Ellen had not told about her past, she told now. All that Stephen could remember of his European journeys, of France, of Italy, of the Alps, he recalled; new countries which he expected to see—with Ellen—he pictured from imagination.
Ellen opened her heart; his remained closed. He said nothing about his youth, his father, his marriage, his inner self, knowing that with reticence foregone, other inhibitions would be difficult. He still believed that some day he could honorably tell Ellen everything.
They drove home silently, their eyes upon the illuminated road and the bordering trees. Once, returning from Gettysburg, they saw a deer, blinded by the light, motionless, terror-stricken. The stopping of the car roused him from his paralysis and he sped into the woods. Their thoughts followed him to some deep refuge.
Wholly unsophisticated, Fetzer would have discerned nothing unwise in these excursions if she had not espied Ellen's look on the day of Stephen's return. She believed that Stephen was too modest to suspect that he was enshrined in this susceptible young breast.
She laid the last articles in Ellen's trunk, and when she went to bed she continued to mourn. The world was, take it as one might, a queer place. Then she turned on her side to sleep. Ellen was young; she would "get over it." After a while she realized that she had forgotten to say her prayers and she crept out of bed and knelt for a long time praying for many persons, but especially for Ellen.