"THERE SHE TURNED AND LOOKED BACK"
It was very cold; the ice was rough, and the wind had blown the dry snow about in light drifts and ripples, so that walking was not difficult. She trudged out, up towards the Bend, skirting the place where the men had been cutting. They had gone home now, and the ice about the black, open space of water was quite deserted. The wind came keenly down the river, blowing an eddy of snow before it; the bleak sky lay like lead over the woods along the shore. There was not a house in sight. Amelia Dilworth looked furtively about her; then she bent down and scraped at the snow on the edge of the ice, as one might do who, in the water, was struggling for a hold upon it. After that, for a long time, she stood there, looking dumbly at the current running, black and silent, between the edges of the ice. At last, her hand over her mouth to check some inarticulate lament, she stooped again, and put her little black muff on the broken snow close to the water.
When she reached Mrs. Kensy's she was quite calm. She said briefly that she had come to order some chickens; "—and I'll take that bundle I asked you to keep for me."
The woman brought it, and Milly tucked her fingers through the stout strings she had tied so carefully a few days before. When she would open it in the woods, and put on the new dress and shawl and the heavy veil that it held, and then, in the dark, take the half-past-five train, no one would know that Thomas Dilworth's wife had fled away into another State. They would find the muff, and they would think—there would be only one thing to think.
"I want the chickens for Sunday," she said; "please send them over on Saturday." Then it came into her mind with a little gush of happiness that she would pay for them on the spot, instead of having the bill sent to Tom, as was her custom; she had drawn a sum of money from the bank a fortnight ago—a small sum, but her own; now it was all in her purse; she would buy Tom's Sunday dinner out of her little fund. Except to leave him, it was the last thing she would ever do for him.
She put her hand into her pocket—and chilled all over. Then stood blankly looking at the woman; then plunged her hand down again into her pocket; then exclaimed under her breath; then tore her bag open and fumbled distractedly among brushes and night-gown and slippers; then pulled her pocket wrong side out with trembling fingers.
"My purse!" she said, breathlessly. Then she searched everything again.
"It ain't any difference," Mrs. Kensy protested.
"I must have left it at home. I can't go back for it. It is too late."
"What for?" said Mrs. Kensy.