Glenway Wescott

“ For two men had troubled five years of her life, less with emotions than with what she called "problems." The first had been Richard Wallace, the son of a wealthy farmer, a grown-up adolescent, wise in the policies and graces of his age; not clever, but with pride to take the place of vivacity. He had bright gray eyes, and drove the most violent and shining horses in the country. He had tired of many girls who loved him. Olive Templeton, a girl named Valentine, and Flora's cousin Edith, if they happened to be where he was, followed him with angry, intimate glances without ever speaking. ”

“ That evening she and Richard were sitting on the lawn on a great rock shaped like the Ark of the Covenant. The moon shining in their faces as if it were a spotlight; night birds and sleepless birds in a radiance so bright that those whose eyes were made for the darkness could not hunt; and a splash of moonlight running down Richard's cheek, the tired cheek of a young man who has seemed to have been young for a long time. ”

“ Then, under Herbert's different appearance, she discovered a force which she had thought peculiar to Richard. The same breath on her cheek, the same fear of constrained movements in the dark, behind other less fiery horses; the misunderstandings, the paroxysms of timidity, the agreeable weakness, the slight nausea of disappointments. . . . But because Herbert was a man, not a boy, the pressure of his wooing had a definite and different purpose. He wanted to be repulsed, as if to test her fidelity as a wife, and was enjoying in advance a lifetime of peace. His confidence in her increased ”

“ Marianne said.
She dried her eyes, and opened the door of her mother's part of the house. Her mother, who through the thin walls had heard her crying, was waiting in the center of the room under the hanging lamp. "What's happened?" She opened her large arms like those of a man. "Don't you cry," she said. "The one you want isn't always the best husband." She was ready to tell her own story.
"But I don't want him, mother," Flora whispered, moving toward her bedroom door. ”

“ Flora was pleased when her turn came to be the object of his fickle attentions. Her life as a woman would begin with an encouraging conquest, for, with perfect confidence in herself, she intended to be the first to enjoy his wooing and resist his charm. ”

“ When an adolescent, he always stood as near her as he dared, charmed by the perfume of attar-of-roses which drifted from her dress, the odor of orris root in her hair, and the atmosphere, like a delicate scent itself, of the life of a girl nearly thirty years old, gradually losing the freshness of girlhood without growing old, almost without growing older. ”

“ Flora felt that her youth was mutilated, but men and women gazed at it mildly without seeing one scar.
A stranger was introduced: Herbert Ruhl, the new doctor, a brown, wiry man in his thirties. Someone played a blistered piano in which two or three bad strings tingled. Dr. Ruhl asked Flora to dance, but the girls of the Presbyterian church did not waltz. His eyes, under weatherbeaten eyelids, hardened when he looked at her. Someone whispered, "He's a Catholic." ”

“ Then her brother John Craig came again, and she happened to hear him say to Marianne, "If Flora likes this young man, I don't see why religion should keep her from marrying him. She ought to be a Catholic, anyway. She is as pure as the snow, and hates having to decide things for herself. ”

“ But the distance of the rest of a lifetime, like that from the corner of the lawn to the house door, seemed short; it was not worth while asking anyone to accompany her that far—she could go alone.
"Good-by, then," he said. A man moving over the damp lawn, moving quickly, so that the time she would have to call him back would be short, too short. . . . His feet, mechanically steady, made a sound of mowing down the well-illuminated grass.
Flora went first to the north wing where her brother and sister-in-law lived, and wept in Marianne's arms. "Be strong. ”

“ But Marianne, for reasons of conscience, was unwilling to relieve her of any part of that burden.
She tried instead to strengthen every germ of decision which seemed to begin to form in Flora's mind, praising Ralph, the girl's favorite brother, as her principal comment on Richard. "It is hard for a boy of Richard's disposition to be good," she would say. "Are you sure that he is a Christian ?"
As far as she could see, there was little true love amid their emotions, their tumult of innumerable hesitations ”

“ Marianne said, "Dr. Ruhl asked to take you home, didn't he? Then cousin Edith can come home with us—she is alone." Flora realized that a girl ought not to be alone; she would have to keep her fidelity to Richard a secret. She thanked the doctor. ”