At length she turned her back on the stream and retraced her steps up the path. The house loomed very sombre and still in the quiet night. A light shone dimly from her father's window. At intervals a deep, contented sighing came from the cows in the barnyard. She took the path past the house and down to the corral, where she paused, her ear arrested by the steady drone of milking. A lantern sitting on the black earth, cast a little circle of light, and threw a docile cow in dreadful silhouette against the barn. And by that dim light Beulah discerned the bent form of her mother, milking.
"Mother, this is too much!" the girl exclaimed.
Her mother started and looked up. "You're leaving us, Beulah?" she asked. There was no reproach in her voice, nor even surprise, but a kind of quiet sorrow. "I couldn't let the poor brutes suffer," she explained.
"Yes, I'm leaving," said Beulah. "I can't stand it any longer."
The mother sighed. "I've seen it coming for some time," she said, at length. "I suppose it can't be helped."
"You're so passive," returned the girl, with a touch of impatience. "You make me want to fight. Of course it can be helped, but it can't be helped by always giving in."
"Your father has met one of his own mettle at last," said the mother, and the girl fancied she detected a note of pride, but whether of father, or daughter, or both, she could only guess. "Well, it's all very sad. Your father is a good man, Beulah…I should send you back to your bed, but somehow I can't. I—I don't blame you, Beulah."
She had finished the last cow. Beulah helped with the pails of milk, and the two women went back to the house together. When Mary had washed her hands she took her daughter's face between her palms and kissed her on the cheeks. Slowly Beulah's arms stole about her neck, and it took all the steel in her nature to prevent surrender.
"It's not you I'm going from," she managed to say. "You understand that, don't you? I'll write to you often, and we'll surely meet before long…But I've just got to. There's no other way out."
"Stay till morning, Beulah. Your father may be disposed to give and take a little then, and you'll do the same, won't you?…Oh, my girl, don't break up our home like this!"