She sobbed aloud as she went. She, who had come to America so proudly, so confidently of glad fortune, who had thought the world a fairy tale and believed that she had found its prince—what place on earth would there be for her after this, disgraced and ashamed?
They would ship her back to Mamma at once. And the scandal would travel with her, whispered by tourists, blazoned by newspapers.
And her family had so counted upon her! They had looked for such great things!
Now she had utterly blackened their name, tarnished them all forever with her disrepute. Poor Julietta's hopes would be ruined. . . . No one would want a Santonini. . . . Lucia would be furious. The Tostis might even repudiate her—certainly they would inflict their condescension.
She could only disappear, hide in some nursing sisterhood.
So ran her wild thoughts as she scrambled down these endless mountain sides. All the black fears that she had fought off earlier in the evening by her belief in Johnny's devotion were upon her now like a pack of wolves. She wished that she could die at once and be out of it, yet when she heard the sudden wash of water, almost under her feet, she jumped aside and screamed.
A river! In the night it looked wider than that one they had followed that afternoon but it might only be another part of it.
Very wearily she made her way along the bank, so mortally tired that it seemed as if every step must be her last. There was no underbrush to struggle with now, for she had come to a grove of pines and their fallen needles made a carpet for her lagging feet.
The rain was nearly over, but she was too wet and too cold to take comfort in that.
More and more laggingly she went and at last, when a hidden root tripped her, she made no effort to rise, but lay prostrate, her cheek upon her outflung arm, and yielded to the dark, drowsy oblivion that stole numbingly over her.