e more fortunate
individual has rejected. Yes, it was out of a foolish bitterness of
heart that I had spoken.

"Go on before," said Priscilla abruptly, and with true feminine
imperiousness, which heretofore I had never seen her exercise. "It
pleases me best to loiter along by myself. I do not walk so fast as
you."

With her hand she made a little gesture of dismissal. It provoked me;
yet, on the whole, was the most bewitching thing that Priscilla had
ever done. I obeyed her, and strolled moodily homeward, wondering--as
I had wondered a thousand times already--how Hollingsworth meant to
dispose of these two hearts, which (plainly to my perception, and, as I
could not but now suppose, to his) he had engrossed into his own huge
egotism.

There was likewise another subject hardly less fruitful of speculation.
In what attitude did Zenobia present herself to Hollingsworth? Was it
in that of a free woman, with no mortgage on her affections nor
claimant to her hand, but fully at liberty to surrender both, in
exchange for the heart and hand which she apparently expected to
receive? But was it a vision that I had witnessed in the wood? Was
Westervelt a goblin? Were those words of passion and agony, which
Zenobia had uttered in my hearing, a mere stage declamation? Were they
formed of a material lighter than common air? Or, supposing them to
bear sterling weight, was it a perilous and dreadful wrong which she
was meditating towards herself and Hollingsworth?

Arriving nearly at the farmhouse, I looked back over the long slope of
pasture land, and beheld them standing together, in the light of
sunset, just on the spot where, according to the gossip of the
Community, they meant to build their cottage. Priscilla, alone and
forgotten, was lingering in the shadow of the wood.

XV. A CRISIS

Thus the summer was passing away,--a summer of toil, of interest, of
something that was not pleasure, but which went deep into my heart, and
there became a rich experience. I found myself looking forward to
years, if not to a lifetime, to be spent on the same system. The
Community were now beginning to form their permanent plans. One of our
purposes was to erect a Phalanstery (as I think we called it, after
Fourier; but the phraseology of those days is not very fresh in my
remembrance), where the great and general family should have its
abiding-place. Individual members, too, who made it a point of
religion to preserve t