Those who watched her face as she read say that it took on an ashen
color and she looked years older. Her real spirit seemed to be looking
forth from those wide limpid eyes for an instant, the spirit of a
coward who had been fooling the world; the spirit of a lost soul who
had grown old in sin; the spirit of a soul who had stepped over the
bounds and sinned beyond her depth.
She looked about upon them all, stricken, appalled,--not sorry but just
afraid,--and not for her friends, but for herself! And then she gave a
horrid little lost laugh and dropping the telegram as if it had burned
her, she flung out her voice upon them with a blaze in her big eyes and
a snarl in her lute-voice: "Well, I wasn't to blame was I? They all were grown men, weren't they?
It was up to them. I'm going to get out of here! This is an
awful place!"
She gave a shudder and turning swiftly fled to the elevator, catching
it just as the door was being shut, and they saw her rising behind the
black and gold grating and waving a mocking little white hand at them
as they watched her amazed. Then one of them stooped and picked up the
telegram. And while they still stood at the doorway wondering some one
pointed to a brilliant blue car that was sliding down the avenue across
the beach road.
"She has gone!" they said looking at one another strangely. Did she
really care then?
* * * * * The dinner at Sabbath Valley parsonage was a good one. It was quite
different from any dinner Laurie Shafton had ever eaten before. It had
a taste that he hadn't imagined just plain chicken and mashed potatoes
and bread and butter and coffee and cherry pie could have.
Those were things he seldom picked out from a menu, and he met them as
something new and delicious, prepared in this wonderful country way.
Also the atmosphere was queer and interesting.
The minister had helped him into the dining-room, a cheery room with a
bay window looking toward the church and a window box of nasturtiums in
which the bees hummed and buzzed.
The girl came in and acknowledged the casual introduction of her father
with a quite sophisticated nod and sat down across from him. And there
was a prayer at the beginning of the meal! Just as he was about
to say something graceful to the girl, there was a prayer. It
was almost embarrassing. He had never seen one before like this. At a
boarding school once he had experienced a thing they called "grace"
which consisted in standing behind their chairs while the entire
assembled hungry multitude repeated a poem of a religious nature. He
remembered they used to spend their time making up parodies on it--one
ran something about "this same old fish upon my plate," and rhymed with
"hate." He stared at the lovely bowed hair of the girl across the table
while it was going on, and got ready a remark calculated to draw her
smiles, but the girl lifted eyes that seemed so far away he felt as
though she did not see him, and he contented himself with replying to
his host's question something about the part of the chicken he liked
best. It was a queer home to him, it seemed so intimate. Even the
chicken seemed to be a detail of their life together, perhaps because
there was only one chicken, and one breast. Where he dwelt there were
countless breasts, and everybody had a whole breast if he wanted it, or
a whole chicken for the matter of that. Here they had to stop and ask
what others liked before they chose for themselves. This analysis went
queerly on in his mind while he sat waiting for his plate and wondering
over the little things they were talking about. Mrs. Severn said Miss
Saxon had been crying all through church, and she told her Billy had
been away all night. She was awfully worried about his going with that
baseball team.