The mare stooped to her work and shook herself into a trot, the spokes whirling into feathery fans down the silvery-dusted pike cityward, and then, skirting its southern flanks, on golden-cushioned country roads, rolling smoother and lighter, and the swift wheels growing more wing-like at top speed; under silver-leafed poplars and lombardies tapering like road-side steeples; by thoroughfare and farm-gate; under beech and maple copses and broad oaks on the park-like common; by scarp and counterscarp and over the smooth glacis of earthworks, memorials of the late war; by woodlands of ash and beech, and over low fallow of redeemed marsh, right into the golden eyelashes of the sun. The great summer city lay northward under its nebulous canopy of dust, a soft hazy picture, dimpled with domes and spires. By surburban villas; by farmsteads overflowed by the swelling city; by log churches in cool nooks, contradicting the pretentious architecture about them; by happy evening lovers, and wives waiting at the gate for their home-coming husbands; by noisy German gardens, and revellers in quaint picturesque costumes; by rival coaches, and racing-buggies of the sporting gentry that tried to pass them, but soon gave out under the black mare's long, tireless stride; about the great city till the broad river lay all ablush before them with sunset. And then curving back into town, the soft dazzle melting into umber; through streets breaking into brilliants of parallel burners that end in a star, to the utter confusion of geometric definition; through streets of home-going multitudes, and by open summer windows showing the spread cloth and tableware; over the hoarse drum-beat of the bridge, and by the marble palaces of the dead looking cool and tranquil in the rising moon; winding the shell drive between Osage orange hedges; and then the half-aërial flight of those wing-like wheels is over for ever and for ever.
Then Sudie spoke. She felt she must say something, utter some protest of her womanhood against that wicked, wicked business: "Mr. Nettles, do you not think it wrong to fight a duel?"
"Yes, Miss Sue," said he gravely, "it is a very wicked thing."
She looked for some equivocation, some excuse or palliation of the wrong, which she would have to controvert—poor little logician of love!—and show him how bad it was; and then he would not do it. She hardly knew what to say to that speech.
"I don't think I could love any one that fights duels," was the next effort, still, poor child! offering her coin, her woman's affections, in that cruel, heedless market of men.
He said nothing: he felt it was right she should say that, and that he should bear it in silence.
At the door he stopped to part with her for ever. She could not bear it. She was deathly white, the touch of rouge starting out like a blood-spot.
"Cannot you help it?" she asked.
"No, Miss Sue," he said simply, "I can't."
She said nothing: just put up her lips and kissed him, and fled up stairs swiftly and softly, poor weeping, breaking little heart, crushed under the iron wheels of that cruel code!