Mary Raymond Shipman Andrews

“ If she got there first and rode on the bridge, they would see her fall, they would have time to stop. The bravest cannot face death at a turn of the hand without a great heart-throb. This girl was of the bravest, and she felt her pulses bound and stop for a second of time, then she looked deliberately across the valley at the bunch of riders, as Crackerjack's long, sweeping stride carried her every second nearer them. Annie was the only one she cared an atom for, and Annie was back on top of the hill—she could see the gray horse and the slim figure. ”

“ The bias of a practised mind to refuse mere feeling as a reason, and a certain Spartan vein of courage that impelled her to choose the harder of two roads—these decided her. With a wrench at her soul she cast away the happier possibility, and was adjusting her life sternly, with trembling, determined hands, to the bitter belief of the other. ”

“ A great rectangle of light had swept clanging up the dark road, and they had all rushed to catch the last car, and she remembered stumbling on it, dazed and quiet, knowing only that he sat next to her through the short four miles to town, but with hardly a word to say, as silent, as stirred as herself. There could be no mistake about that; no one could pretend feeling so strong; no one could be an actor so perfectly. ”

“ But the girl knew that she could not be unhappy always, that it was of the essential part of herself to fight her way through clouds to sunshine as a diver pushes down the water to get back to the air that he must breathe or die. Life was full of good things, and only a coward would give up the battle because he might not win the best thing. She had still her work—the girl painted so well that people who knew foretold a future for her ”

“ He was a gentleman, to begin with. The straight, sincere look of his eyes, the thousand and one acts of simple friendship that had filled those months, rose up to reproach her. No; that theory was impossible. Then could it be that she had mistaken mere friendship for love, and that he had seen the mistake and been touched to a warmer feeling from pure sympathy? ”

“ She started as she thought of what Jimmie Saintsbury had said, and then remembered that the riders were to come by the other road, crossing the stream miles away at a new and safe bridge.
Crackerjack had eaten all the grass within his tether, and was pulling toward pastures new, so she threw the bridle over her arm and walked to the brow of the hill. She pushed down the daisies that gleamed white against the shaded grays of the old fence, and sitting down, threw her gloves and her sailor hat beside her, and the breeze blew her blond hair about her face. ”

“ He was strong and good—it would always be sacred to him, this unasked love of hers; she might always remember him as she wished, as the truest of gentlemen; she need never be ashamed that she had put him first in her world. ”

“ Mental battles need no very wide scene for their field of action. Here in this narrow lane, her back against the silvery old wood of a farm fence, and the sappy June grass deep about her, the girl was drawing out her lines for the greatest fight that had come into her life. ”

“ That night at twelve o'clock three men sat about a table in a corner of the big red room, luxurious with its deep warmth of crimson color, its heavy gilded rafters, of their club in New York. Two of them were commonplace enough; well bred, well dressed, low voiced, the outer edges of their personalities smoothed into the pleasant if monotonous uniformity that results from the steady friction of great cities. ”

“ Life was very full. While it might be made large and unselfish and brave and bright, it would be a pity, it would be a shame to her birthright of courage, if she should fail to live it with her might. ”

“ Two minutes more and a dozen riders and horses were streaming down the road, the prettiest sight in the world. Crackerjack led with his fast, effortless walk, and Lyndon by his side trotted his lean bay hunter to keep abreast of the alert, spirited brown head. Alert and spirited too, in the saddle, the girl tried hard to keep her word and "make up." With quick response and earnest questioning and ready sympathy she kept the man in play on the subject that interests every man—himself ”

“ Is there anything so good as to be on a good horse, with good roads and an afternoon before one? That there is "something about the outside of a horse that is good for the inside of a man" applies mentally as well as physically. There is no room in the saddle for Black Care, and if he indeed mounts behind the horseman, he is likely to fall off within the first mile. ”

“ A peasant woman would not have hesitated; but as the keenness of sense, the exquisite sight and hearing, that belong to a savage are lost somewhere in the refining process of the ages between him and his twentieth-century descendant, so this woman, who was the high-water mark of civilization, had dulled in training the woman's sure instinct. ”

“ The girl leaned against the fence, with her arm through Crackerjack's bridle.
"Please everybody get killed before Annie," she said, and tickled the horse's head with the handle of her crop. "And please go on—you disturb my thinking."
"We'll go down over the bridge out to Everett, and back by the Blue Island road, and stop here for you. if you're still thinking," said Lyndon. "Seems to me you're mighty foolish not to let me think with you," he added, tentatively. ”