She raised her resolute head; her eyes matched the sky—clear, unclouded, fathomless.
In hours of deep distress the sound of her own voice had always helped her to endure; and now, as she walked across the lawn bareheaded, she told herself not to grieve over a just debt to be paid, not to quail because life held for her nothing of what she had dreamed.
If there was a tremor now and then in her low voice, none but the robins heard it; if she lay flung face downward in the grasses, under the screen of alders by the water, there was no one but the striped chipmunk to jeer and mock.
“Now listen, you silly girl,” she whispered; “he cannot take away the sky and the sunshine from you! He cannot blind and deafen you, silly! Cry if you must, you little coward!—you will marry him all the same.”
Suddenly sitting up, alert, she heard something singing. It was the river flowing close beside her.
She pushed away the screen of leaves and stretched out full length, looking down into the water.
A trout lay there; his eyes were shining with an opal tint, his scarlet spots blazed like jewels.
And as she lay there, her bright hair tumbled about her face, she heard, above the river’s monotone, a sharp, whiplike sound—swis-s-sh—and a silvery thread flashed out across her vision. It was a fishing-line and leader, and the fisherman who had cast it was standing fifty feet away up-stream, hip-deep in the sunlit water.
Swish! swish! and the long line flew back, straightened far behind him, and again lengthened out, the single yellow-and-gilt fly settling on the water just above the motionless trout, who simply backed off down-stream.
But there were further troubles for the optimistic angler; a tough alder stem, just under water, became entangled in the line; the fisherman gave a cautious jerk; the hook sank into the water-soaked wood, buried to the barb.