She felt herself shivering, resentful of the ecstasy of sweetness that lapped and folded her. The dull glow of the sky irritated her with its very serenity.
“If I only hadn’t seen him! If I had been strong enough not to! It’s ungenerous of him. He ought to leave. He ought to have gone away after that last time! He _ought_!”
But if he had! The thought obtruded itself. She had longed for him to come; she knew, down in her soul, she had. Her heart had given her lips the lie. The woman in her had betrayed her conscience.
“It’s the truth!” she cried, lifting her hand. “It’s the truth! Oh, if he hadn’t come--_if--he--hadn’t_!” She muttered it to the wind by the loneliness of the slashed hedges. “That would have been the one last terrible thing. It would have crushed me! I could never have been glad again. I’m sick now with desolation at the thought of it! It’s easier not to be able to forgive myself than it would be not to be able to forgive him! But he _did_ come! He wants me!” Her voice had a quiver of exultation. “Nothing on earth ever can rob me of that!--nothing!”
She pressed her arm against her eyes till her sight blent in golden-lettered flashes. The one presence was all about her; she could even feel his breath against her hair. His eyes had been the color of deep purple grapes under morning dew. The old hunger for him, for his hand, his voice, swept down upon her, and she crouched closer to the ground wet with fog-dew, striking the sod hard with her hands. He had come. He was there. He never would go--she knew that. If he stayed, she must yield. She had been perilously close to it that day.
After a time she became quieter and drew from her skirt pocket a crumpled letter, received that morning after three re-forwardings. It was in a decisive feminine hand, and spreading it before her, Margaret turned several pages and began to read:
“Your letter has somehow distressed me,” it read. “It seemed unlike your old self. It seemed sad. I imagine that you are troubled about something. Is it only that you are tired and dissatisfied? I have wondered much about you since you left the city in the spring. What have you been doing? How have you spent the time in the stale places of idleness? I have been so busy here at the hospital that I have seen none of our old friends. Time goes so quickly when you like your work! And I enjoy mine. It has come to mean a great deal to me. Dr. Goodno intends soon, he says, to put me in charge of the children’s ward. Poor little things! They suffer so much more uncomplainingly than grown folks. Dr. Goodno is our superintendent and Mrs. Goodno is superintendent of nurses. She has been so dear and kind to me, one could not help loving her. It hardly seems possible that I have been here three whole years.