But she knew that she fluttered in vain and that every passing week brought her nearer the inevitable sacrifice. If she could only die—but it takes more than a breaking heart to kill a healthy young woman! Her misery could steal the roses from her cheeks, could keep her tossing through the long nights in an agony of sleepless horror, but in the daytime she dragged herself listlessly about her work as usual.
“Mose ’lows he won’t be yere to-night. He’s done gone to Beebee,” Mrs. Chunn explained one evening.
Mellie faintly sighed her relief.
Mrs. Chunn laid her string of peppers on the table and began on another. She was watching the girl without appearing to do so. “Ain’t you-all keerin’ what fer he’s gone?”
Her stepdaughter’s hands fell into her lap. She looked up with a face out of which the color had been suddenly driven.
“Yo’ gump, he’s aimin’ to git the license to-morrow.”
Everything went black before Mellie’s eyes. She caught at the arms of the rocking chair and gripped them desperately. Presently the blood beat back to her heart.
Mrs. Chunn’s dry voice—miles away in the haze—came to her distantly. “’N’s I say, a gyurl that gits fohty acres of good Arkinsaw bottom land with her man is mighty lucky. I reckon I done mighty well by you-all, Mellie. Yo’ hadn’t ought to be so ill and ongrateful.”
Mellie hurried out into the quiet night. She was stifling, oppressed by a deadly choking at her throat. She fled through the slashed field, as if driven by some impotent instinct to attempt escape from the evil fate. Habit led her to the big tree in the hickory lead where she and Jed used to play. Her despair was long past tears. She could only lean her head against the bark and give herself to long, dry sobbing till her passion of self-pity had spent itself.
Not till the man was almost beside her did she hear the approaching footsteps deadened by the soft carpet of moss. Wheeling, she stood poised for flight, an arrested picture of youth far gone in grief.