The visions of the past developed with endless clews, which she could not follow aloud. After waiting for her to resume, Sommers asked tentatively:
"Why don't you go back, then?"
She flashed a rapid, indignant glance at him.
"Now! Go back to what?—With him!"
Her lips set tight. He had been stupid, had hit at random.
"No, no," she continued, answering her own heart; "they would never understand. There is never any going back—and, sometimes, not much going ahead," she ended, with an effort to laugh.
They stopped while the horse nibbled at a tall weed in the roadway. They had got fairly into the prairie, and now at some distance on left and right gawky Queen Anne houses appeared. But along their path the waste was unbroken. The swamp on either side of the road was filled with birds, who flew in and out and perched on the dry planks in the walks. An abandoned electric-car track, raised aloft on a high embankment, crossed the avenue. Here and there a useless hydrant thrust its head far above the muddy soil, sometimes out of the swamp itself. They had left the lake behind them, but the freshening evening breeze brought its damp breath across their faces.
"How came you to get into this spot?" the doctor asked, after his searching eyes had roamed over the misty landscape, half swamp, half city suburb.
"I was transferred—about the time of the operation. My school is over there," she pointed vaguely toward the southwest. "I could not afford to live any distance from the school," she added bluntly. "Besides, I wanted to be alone."
So she taught, Sommers reflected, yet she had none of the professional air, the faded niceness of face and manner which he associated with the city school-teacher.