"My dear!" exclaimed Madame. "You mustn't do that. I'll have luncheon kept for you."
"No, please don't, for I really shan't want any. Didn't you observe my breakfast? Even a piano-mover couldn't think of eating again before seven, so let me go a-gypsying till sunset."
Madame nodded troubled acquiescence, and, with a laugh, Edith kissed her good-bye. "I'm subject to the Wander-lust," she said, "and when the call comes, I have to go. It's in my blood to-day, so farewell for the present."
Madame watched her as she went down the street, the golden quill on her green hat bidding jaunty defiance to the wind. As she had said, she felt the call at times, and had to yield to its imperative summons, but to-day it was her soul that craved the solace of the open spaces and the wind-swept fields.
As she dressed, she had tried to dismiss last night's experience as a mere fantasy of sleep, or, if not an actual dream, some vision hailing from the borderland of consciousness, at the point where the senses merge. Yet, even as she argued with herself, she felt the utter futility of it, and knew her denials were vain in the face of truth.
Roaming through the Village
She dreaded the necessity of meeting Alden again, then made a wry face at her own foolishness. "Ridiculous," she said to herself, "preposterous, absurd!" No matter what her own nightmares might be, he slept soundly--of course he did. How could healthy youth with a clear conscience do otherwise?
For an hour or more, she kept to the streets of the village, with the sublime unconsciousness of the city-bred, too absorbed in her own thoughts to know that she was stared at and freely commented upon by those to whom a stranger was a source of excitement. Her tailored gown, of dark green broadcloth, the severe linen shirtwaist, and her simple hat, were subjects of conversation that night in more than one humble home, fading into insignificance only before her radiant hair. The general opinion was that it must be a wig, or the untoward results of some experiment with hair-dye, probably the latter, for, as the postmaster's wife said, "nobody would buy a wig of that colour."
The school bell rang for dismissal, and filled her with sudden panic. After walking through the village all the morning to escape luncheon with Alden, it would be disagreeable to meet him face to face almost at the schoolhouse door. Turning in the opposite direction, she walked swiftly until she came to a hill, upon which an irregular path straggled half-heartedly upward.