been at Mac’s the night before, as she supposed, the town should know she was not crushed by the fact. She stopped as she usually did at the News office, and learned that Dane had not called for the paper. She stopped at the post-office and found he had not got the mail.
When she got home she took the papers and the mail into her room with her. There were several letters for Dane. She separated them, thinking that having this excuse she would go to his verandah, and that if he were not there she would call him. She felt it ridiculous that she could not make a move towards him. But even as she thought it, Lee knocked on her door.
“You have the mail, Meesis Barrington?” he asked.
She gave him the papers and the letters for Dane.
But something about this incident annoyed her extremely. And it was humiliating to be cut off from the man she loved by this boy. And yet, if the man she loved preferred it this way, she had to abide by his wish.
She ate her dinner alone again that night, and became so restless and upset by her isolation that she was in no mood to play the piano afterwards. She went out into the dark and began to pace the drive between the house and the gate. The quality of the night did not help her. There was still a wind, but it was not the fresh wind of the west with a tonic in its rushing air. It was a brooding northeaster of the three-day kind, swaying the pines to a melancholy whine and the poplars to a metallic hiss. It was a wind that preceded a storm of rain. It was a wind that hinted at pain and trouble and unutterable sadnesses. It was a wind that glued one to the earth, that put weights in one’s boots and turned one’s muscles to lead.
At last she felt she was tired enough to sleep. She found her supper in the study. She was able to drink a glass of wine and eat some crackers, but she felt so lonely
