Then upon the stillness another sound broke—a plain warning to his ear. It was a scraping of the buggy wheel against the buggy, showing that his horse, finding its check-rein loosened, but being too well trained to move, had turned short to crop the grass beside the driveway.
How the homely things, the pitiable trifles reach us amid life's immensities!
This overturning of a buggy! The overturning of lives!
He started down the steps, and then midway between the house and the buggy he saw her.
She stood a few yards from him across the grass at one of the entrances of the summer house where she had been working at her needlework. She stood there, not waiting for him to come—but waiting for him to go. For years he had followed her as along a path: this was the end of the path: neither could go farther.
And now, turning at the end of the path, she meant to make him understand—understand her better and understand himself better.
And so she stood there facing him, the whole glowing picture of her wifehood and motherhood and womanhood: not in fear nor anger, nor with any reproach for him nor any stain for herself: but with the deepest understanding and sympathy in a great tragedy—and with her friendship.
Then she turned away and with quiet steps took a slender path which led to those sequestered portions of the grounds where she had left her trowel and geraniums and heliotropes. Slowly along this labyrinth of verdure, under the branches of the old forest trees, she passed. Now a shrub partly hid her: once the long bough of a rose tree touched her shoulder and dropped the petals of its blossoms behind her. Farther away, farther away, then lost down the dim glade.
The buggy crept homeward along the pike. The horse hung its head low; the reins lay on the dashboard; with its obscure sense that something was wrong it struck the gait with which it had always yielded obedience to the sadnesses of the land—and moved along the highway as behind a death.