After her experiences during those last three days, she felt as if sex were an abomination, and she wished for freedom from love. She had already the premonition that she was of those who seem destined to know much persecution of men.
Her strong, forceful, full-blooded, magnetic beauty could not be hidden so deep under sober garments but that the ever-seeking male eye quickly discovered it. As she entered the car she felt its penetrating, remorseless glare, and her face darkened, though she was no longer exposed to the open insults of brakemen and drummers. There was something in the droop of her eyelids and the curve of her mouth which kept all men at a distance, even the most depraved. She was not a victim—a girl to be preyed upon. She was quite evidently a proud, strong woman, to be sued for by all flatteries and attentions.
The train whirled along over the familiar route, and the land was most beautiful. Fresh grass everywhere, seas of green flashing foliage, alternating with smooth slopes of meadow where cattle fed, yet she saw little of it. With sombre eyes turned to the pane she thought and thought.
What was to be done now? That was the question. For a year she had been secretly writing verse and sending it to the magazines. It had all been returned to her. It made her flush hot to think how they had come back to her with scarcely a word of civility. Evidently she was wrong. She was not intended for a writer after all. She thought of the stage, but she did not know how to get upon the stage.
The train drew steadily forward, and familiar lines of hill-tops aroused her, and as she turned her face toward home, the bent and grizzled figure of her father came to her mind as another determining cause. He demanded something of her now after nearly five year's absence from home, for he had paid her way—made it possible for her to be what she was.
There he sat holding his rearing horses and watching, waiting for her. She had a sudden, swift realization of his being a type as he sat there, and it made her throat fill, for it seemed to put him so far away, seemed to take away something of her own sweet dignified personality.
There was a crowd of people on the platform. Some of them she knew, some of them she did not. She looked very fine and lady-like to John Dutcher as she came down the car steps, and the brakeman helped her down, with elaborate and very respectful courtesy.
The horses pranced about, so that John could not even take her hand, and so she climbed into the buggy alone.
"Carl will take care of your trunk," he said. "Give him the check."
She turned to Carl, whom she had not noticed. He bowed awkwardly.