A man is in love with a certain girl. He learns that she is vain, gay, extravagant, heartless, and going to marry some other man. Does any of this comfort him? Not if he is in love with her, it doesn't. Not a bit.
So Gay could say to herself: "He's thoughtless and inconstant, and I'm well out of it!" She could say that, and she did say that, and then she buried her face in her pillow and cried very quietly and very hard.
It would have taken more than one night of wakefulness and weeping to leave marks upon that lovely face which sudden cold water and the resolution to suffer no more could not erase.
But she had not rowed a mile or more before the color in her cheeks was really vivid again and the whites of her eyes showed no traces of tears.
She did not know why she was rowing or whither. It was as if some strong hand had forced her from bed before sunrise, forced her into her fishing-clothes, forced her into a guide boat, placed oars in her hands, and compelled her to row.
She even smiled, wondering where she was going.
"I can go anywhere I like," she thought; "but I don't want to go anywhere in particular, and yet I am quite obviously on my way to somewhere or other. I'm like Alice in Wonderland. I think I'll go to Carrytown and get the morning mail."
But she had no sooner beached toward Carrytown than the distance there seemed unutterably long, especially for a rower who had yet to breakfast.
"I know," thought Gay at last; "I'll row to Placid Brook and see if the big trout is still feeding in his private preserve. I'll land just where we did before and cross the meadow and spy on him from behind a bush. I wish I'd brought some tackle. I'd like to catch him and cook him for my breakfast--so I would!"
Upon this resolution, the work of rowing became very light. It was as if the force which had started her upon the excursion had had Placid Brook in mind all the time.
Having laid her course for the meadow at the mouth of Placid Brook, she kept the stern of the boat in direct line with a distant mountain-top, and so held it. The sun was now peeping over the rim of the world, and here and there morning breezes were darkening and dappling the burnished surface of the lake.
Now and then, as she neared the meadow, Gay glanced over her shoulder, once for quite a long time, resting on her oars, because she thought she saw a doe with a fawn. They turned out to be nothing more tender than a couple of granite rocks. And once again she rested on her oars and looked for a long time--not this time upon the strength of a hallucination, but of an impulse.