A man is in love with a certain girl. He learns that she is vain, gay, extravagant, heartless, and going to marry some other man. Does any of this comfort him? Not if he is in love with her, it doesn't. Not a bit.
So Gay could say to herself: "He's thoughtless and inconstant, and I'm well out of it!" She could say that, and she did say that, and then she buried her face in her pillow and cried very quietly and very hard.
She was up before the sun.
It would have taken more than one night of wakefulness and weeping to leave marks upon that lovely face which sudden cold water and the resolution to suffer no more could not erase.
But she had not rowed a mile or more before the color in her cheeks was really vivid again and the whites of her eyes showed no traces of tears.
She did not know why she was rowing or whither. It was as if some strong hand had forced her from bed before sunrise, forced her into her fishing-clothes, forced her into a guide boat, placed oars in her hands, and compelled her to row.
She even smiled, wondering where she was going.
"I can go anywhere I like," she thought; "but I don't want to go anywhere in particular, and yet I am quite obviously on my way to somewhere or other. I'm like Alice in Wonderland. I think I'll go to Carrytown and get the morning mail."
But she had no sooner beached toward Carrytown than the distance there seemed unutterably long, especially for a rower who had yet to breakfast.