"She wouldn't speak to me," said Molly, "I can't understand it. What did
you say to her?"
"I asked her if she were ill and if we could do anything for her."
"I can't get over her look. I wish I had jumped down and run after her,
but she went off so quickly."
So intense was the sunshine that it appeared to burn into the white
streak of the road, where the dust floated like some smoke on the
breathless air. From the scorched hedges of sumach and bramble, a chorus
of grasshoppers was cheerfully giving praise to a universe that ignored
it.
As Molly rode silently at Gay's side, it seemed to her that Blossom's
startled face looked back at her from the long, hot road, from the waste
of broomsedge, from the cloudless sky, so bright that it hurt her eyes.
It was always there wherever she turned: she could not escape it. A
sense of suffocation in the midst of space choked back the words she
would have spoken, and she felt that the burning dust, which hung low
over the road, had drifted into her brain and obscured her thoughts as
it obscured the objects around her. When, after passing the ordinary,
they turned into the Applegate road, the heavy shade brought a sensation
of relief, and the face which had seemed to start out of the blanched
fields, faded slowly away from her.
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