I could see nothing but the foot of her dress. Had any change passed over her face? Or had the undisturbed smile of my Cloud-Mother followed me on the road?
Perhaps the cloud had thickened. Perhaps thunders and lightnings moved within it. Sane people sometimes turn wild after being lost, running from their friends, and fighting against being restrained and brought home.
The gray dress in front of my hearth I could not see without a heaving of the breast.
X.
How a man's life is drawn, turned, shaped, by a woman! He may deny it. He may swagger and lie about it. Heredity, ambition, lust, noble aspirations, weak self-indulgence, power, failure, success, have their turns with him. But the woman he desires above all others, whose breast is his true home, makes him, mars him.
Had she cast herself on the settle exhausted and ill after exposure? Should I find her muttering and helpless? Worse than all, had the night made her forget that she was a Cloud-Mother?
I drew my breath with an audible sound in the throat. Her dress stirred. She leaned around the edge of the settle.
Eagle de Ferrier, not my Cloud-Mother, looked at me. Her features were pinched from exposure, but flooded themselves instantly with a blush. She snatched her shoes from the hearth and drew them on.
I was taken with such a trembling that I held to a gallery post.