reenstream. I will be back here in two hours,
but it will be for the last time. You must decide one way or the other
while I am gone. You may stay or leave; I'm going to leave. Remember--no
more penny kisses, no more meetings like this; it must be all or nothing.
Some man will take me to Paris, have me." She dissolved against the dark
of the maple grove.

XVII

But, curiously, sitting alone, he gave little consideration to the
decision, immediate and irrevocable, which confronted him. His thoughts
evaded, defied, him, retreated into night-like obscurity, returned
burdened with trivial and unexpected details of memory. It grew colder,
the rich monotone of mountain and sky changed to an impenetrable, ugly
density above which the constellations wheeled without color. His back was
toward the maple grove; the removed, disembodied voices mingled in a sound
not more intelligible than the chorus of frogs. It occurred to him
suddenly that, perhaps, in a week, a month, he might not be in
Greenstream, nor in the mountains, but with the white body of Meta Beggs
in the midst of one of those vast, fabulous cities the lust of which
possessed her so utterly.... Or she would be gone.

He thought instinctively of the little cemetery on the slope above the
village. One by one that rocky patch was absorbing family and familiars.
Life appeared to be a stumbling procession winding through Greenstream
over the rise and sinking into that gaping, insatiable chasm. He was
conscious of an invisible force propelling him into that sorry parade,
toward those unpretentious stones marked with the shibboleth of names and
dates. A desperate anxiety to evade this fate set his soul cowering in its
fatal mask of clay. This, he realized, was unadulterated, childish fear,
and he angrily aroused himself from its stifling influence.

Meta Beggs would be back soon; she would require an answer to her
resolve ... all or nothing. The heat, chilled by the night and loneliness,
faded a little from his blood. She demanded a great deal--a man could
never return. He bitterly cursed his indecision. He became aware of a
pervading weariness, a stiffness from his prolonged contact with the
earth, and he rose, moved about. His legs were as rigid, as painful, as an
old man's; he had been leaning on his elbow, and the arm was dead to the
fingers. The nerves pricked and jerked in infinitesimal, fiery agonies. He
swung his arms, stamped his feet, aiding his stagnatin