her look and tone. Now he thought she understood him,
and feared; now he was sure she did not, and despaired. To-night the
pressure of accumulated misgivings sent the scale drooping toward
despair, and her indifference was the more chilling after the flush of
joy into which she had plunged him by dismissing Denis Eady. He mounted
School House Hill at her side and walked on in silence till they
reached the lane leading to the saw-mill; then the need of some definite
assurance grew too strong for him.

"You'd have found me right off if you hadn't gone back to have that last
reel with Denis," he brought out awkwardly. He could not pronounce the
name without a stiffening of the muscles of his throat.

"Why, Ethan, how could I tell you were there?"

"I suppose what folks say is true," he jerked out at her, instead of
answering.

She stopped short, and he felt, in the darkness, that her face was
lifted quickly to his. "Why, what do folks say?"

"It's natural enough you should be leaving us" he floundered on,
following his thought.

"Is that what they say?" she mocked back at him; then, with a sudden
drop of her sweet treble: "You mean that Zeena--ain't suited with me any
more?" she faltered.

Their arms had slipped apart and they stood motionless, each seeking to
distinguish the other's face.

"I know I ain't anything like as smart as I ought to be," she went on,
while he vainly struggled for expression. "There's lots of things a
hired girl could do that come awkward to me still--and I haven't got much
strength in my arms. But if she'd only tell me I'd try. You know she
hardly ever says anything, and sometimes I can see she ain't suited,
and yet I don't know why." She turned on him with a sudden flash of
indignation. "You'd ought to tell me, Ethan Frome--you'd ought to! Unless
you want me to go too--"

Unless he wanted her to go too! The cry was balm to his raw wound. The
iron heavens seemed to melt and rain down sweetness. Again he struggled
for the all-expressive word, and again, his arm in hers, found only a
deep "Come along."

They walked on in silence through the blackness of the hemlock-shaded
lane, where Ethan's sawmill gloomed through the night, and out again
into the comparative clearness of the fields. On the farther side of the
hemlock belt the open country rolled away before them grey and lonely
under the stars. Sometimes their way led them under the shade of an
overhanging bank or through the thin o