"The engineer says we must start, dear," Lane suggested. "We have only just time to make the connection."
Vickers untwisted his sister's arms from his neck and placed them gently in her husband's hands.
"Good-by, girl," he called.
Sinking into a chair near the open door, Isabelle gazed back at the hills of Grafton until the car plunged into a cut. She gave a long sigh. "We're off!" her husband said joyously. He was standing beside her, one hand resting on her shoulder.
"Yes, dear!" She took his strong, muscled hand in hers. But when he tried to draw her to him, she shrank back involuntarily, startled, and looked at him with wide-open eyes as if she would read Destiny in him,—the Man, her husband.
For this was marriage, not the pantomime they had lived through all that day. That was demanded by custom; but now, alone with this man, his eyes alight with love and desire, his lips caressing her hair, his hands drawing her to him,—this was marriage!
Her eyes closed as if to shut out his face,—"Don't, don't!" she murmured vaguely. Suddenly she started to her feet, her eyes wide open, and she held him away from her, looking into him, looking deep into his soul.
CHAPTER IV
It was a hot, close night. After the Bellefleur had been coupled to the Western express at the junction, Lane had the porters make up a bed for Isabelle on the floor of the little parlor next the observation platform, and here at the rear of the long train, with the door open, she lay sleepless through the night hours, listening to the rattle of the trucks, the thud of heavy wheels on the rails, disturbed only when the car was shifted to the Adirondack train by the blue glare of arc lights and phantom figures rushing to and fro in the pallid night.
The excitement of the day had utterly exhausted her; but her mind was extraordinarily alive with impressions,—faces and pictures from this great day of her existence, her marriage. And out of all these crowding images emerged persistently certain ones,—Aline, with the bloom almost gone, the worn air of something carelessly used. That was due to the children, to cares,—the Gorings were poor and the two years abroad must have been a strain. All the girls at St. Mary's had thought that marriage ideal, made all of love. For there was something of the poet in Eugene Goring, the slim scholar, walking with raised head and speaking with melodious voice. He was a girl's ideal…. And then came Nan Lawton, with her jesting tone, and sly, half-shut eyes. Isabelle remembered how brilliant Nan's marriage was, how proud she herself had been to have a part in it. Nan's face was blotted by Alice Johnston's with her phlegmatic husband. She was happy, serene, but old and acquainted with care.