I wonder, can I buy Henry Davis off,
if she wants to go back in six months?"
And yet, in spite of his calm understanding of the situation,
the wound burned. As he went about putting things into some
semblance of order, he paused once and looked hard into
the fire. . . . When she did want to go back--let it be in six
months or six weeks or six days--would things be the same?
Something had been done to the very structure and fabric
of their life. "Can it ever be the same?" he said to himself;
and then he passed his hand over his eyes, in a bewildered
way--"Will I be the same?" he said.
III
SUMMER at the Shaker settlement, lying in the green cup of the hills,
was very beautiful. The yellow houses along the grassy street
drowsed in the sunshine, and when the wind stirred the maple leaves
one could see the distant sparkle of the lake. Athalia had a fancy,
in the warm twilights, for walking down Lonely Lake Road, that jolted
over logs and across gullies and stopped abruptly at the water's edge.
She had to pass Lewis's house on the way, and if he saw her he would
call out to her, cheerfully,
"Hullo, 'Thalia! how are you, dear?"
And she, with prim intensity, would reply, "Good-evening, BROTHER Lewis."
If one of the sisters was with her, they would stop and speak to him;
otherwise she passed him by in such an eager consciousness of her
part that he smiled--and then sighed. When she had a companion,
Lewis and the other Shakeress would gossip about the weather
or the haying, and Lewis would have the chance to say:
"You're not overworking, 'Thalia? You're not tired?" While Athalia,
in her net cap and her gray shoulder cape buttoned close up to her chin,
would dismiss the anxious affection with a peremptory "Of course not!
I have bread to eat you know not of, Brother Lewis.
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