“Come, Kate, this is too absurd. How could I help the accident of such a meeting? I had not seen the children since our separation. She has always taught them to love me. How could I prevent it if I wished?”
“Yes; and you love her, too,” she insisted stubbornly, and the full red lips trembled and parted, and then softened into a—smile.
“But don’t flatter yourself I care, or am jealous, because this scene has humiliated and angered me. You’re not worth a moment’s jealousy, you great hulking baby!”
Gordon pressed the button and ordered a lunch served in their seat, and smilingly refused to continue the quarrel.
When the train crossed the North Carolina line it ran into the belt of the advancing spring rains from the South. At Wilson, it was pouring in torrents and had been raining steadily for two days. At Fayetteville, the train was an hour late, delayed by a washout.
Lucy had gone to sleep with her arm around her mother’s neck and one hand resting softly on her cheek. Ruth’s heart had been deeply touched by this gentle and silent sympathy of the dawning sex consciousness of her daughter’s soul. The quick little eyes had seen the tragedy, and a voice within whispered its soft words of new, mysterious kinship.
Soon after the train pulled out of Fayetteville it struck the long, straight run of the South Carolina low country. For thirty miles the track is as straight as an arrow, and before the gleaming headlight of the engine shows on the track the watchers at the stations can see the trembling light in the distant sky beyond the sixteen-mile line of the horizon.
The dark eyes were dozing in fitful sleep with the old spell of love once more enveloping the soul. She was dreaming of him, laughing at some boyish prank.
Over the straight track, down grade, the Limited was sweeping at full speed through the black storm.
Suddenly Ruth was awakened by a sickening crash as though the earth had collided with a star and been crushed as an egg-shell. The car seemed to leap a hundred feet into the air, plunge through space, and strike the ground with a dull smash that sent dust and splinters flying through every inch of space.