She had dropped more than one tear over that back fence.
She too had lost something during the summer. Struggle had sapped up some
of the wine of youth. Her face was thinner, but that was not the vital
difference. The real change lay in the determination with which she had
learned to set her jaw, the defiance with which she held her head, and
the wistfulness, the pleading, with which her eyes seemed to be looking
out into the future. The combination of things about her was a strange
one.
She looked to the west; the sun was low, the clouds very beautiful. For
the minute she seemed to relax:--beauty always rested her. And then, with
a sharp closing of her eyes, a bitter little shake of her head, she
turned away. She could not look at beautiful things now without the
consciousness that Karl could not see them.
They always sat together in the library that hour before dinner--"our
hour" they had come to call it. She wondered, with a hot rush of tears,
if they did not care for it because it marked the close of another day.
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