heart, and then ran with extended arms back to Red Hall, stumbling and recovering herself, and fluttering on, still with arms outstretched, like a wounded bird trying to rise but unable, seeking a covert where it may hide its head and die.
CHAPTER XXX
TO WEDDING BELLS
She ran on. Red Hall was before her. The sun had set, and scarlet, amber, and amethyst were the tints of the sky, blotted by the great bulk of the old house standing up alone against the horizon.
She ran on. and the wedding bells of Mersea steeple chanted joyously in the summer evening air, and the notes flew over the flats like melodious wildfowl.
She ran up the steps, in at the door of the hall, where sat Elijah with his finger feeling the inscription on the chimneypiece, with the red light glaring through the western window on his forehead, staining it crimson.
She cast herself at his feet; she placed her elbows on his knees, and laid her head upon them. Dimly he saw the scarlet cap like a broken poppy droop and fall before him, he put out his hand and it rested upon it.
She had come to him, to the only heart that was constant, that was not to be shaken and moved from its anchorage; to the only soul that answered to her own, to the only mind that read her thoughts. The George of her fancy, the ideal of truth and steadfastness, was dissolved, and had disappeared leaving a mean vulgar object behind from which she shrank. To him whom she had hated, with whom she had fought and against whom she had stiffened her back, she now flew as her only support, her only anchorage.
She could not speak, her thoughts chased through her head in wild disorder like the clouds when there are cross currents in the sky.
Now and then a spasmodic sob broke from her and shook her.
"What is the matter, Mehalah? Where have you been?"
She did not answer. She could not. She was choking.
