“Yes.... And now I want to give you this, please.”
He shook his head.
She could not leave him so. “For Lizzie—she’s so steady. I’m rich ... and I’ll be much happier—going to the bare-headed man. Please—for me——”
“Don’t you take that robe off!” he said suddenly. “I don’t want it—jumpin’ in and out. I never take it out of the office till snow flies. He’ll bring it down to the box, when I’m passin’ to-morrow. Why, you’d get all soaked, Miss—a-goin’ up to him.... Well, I’ll take the money for Lizzie—if you’re rich—but it’s ridiculous much, and I’d have fetched you for nothin’.”
She pressed his hand in both of hers and turned away through the break in the fence.... It seemed darker; and when the grinding of the tires on the wet gravel died away, the dripping silence came home to her, alien and fearful.... She had seen the name; soon she would see his house—but this was no man’s land, an after-death land; this was ‘the hollows and the vagueness of light,’ of which he had written....
She saw the house and faltered on. She had not the strength to call.... On the slope to the great trees the burden of the heavy robe would have borne her to the ground, had she not let it fall from her.... She could not believe the padlock on the door, felt it with her hands, the weight and the brass of it. It was hard for her to understand the cruel cold of it—as for a child that has never been hurt intentionally. She sank to her knees and prayed that it was not there.... But it was. The reality entered her brain, the thick icy metal of it.
“Betty Berry—Betty Berry, I am coming!”
She lifted her head in the rain. His call was like a thought of her own, but sharper, truer. This was his door. He was coming. It was still light. She wanted to sleep again, but the death-like cold warned her. She would die before he came....
She raised herself against the door. The black heap of the fur-robe on the slope held her eyes.... On the way to it she fainted again; again the cold rain roused her.... Always on the borders of the rousing, she heard it: