" North Dormer had treasures of indulgence for brands in the burning,
but only derision for those who succeeded in getting snatched from
it; and Charity had always understood Julia Hawes's refusal to be
snatched....

Only--was there no alternative but Julia's? Her soul recoiled from the
vision of the white-faced woman among the plush sofas and gilt frames.
In the established order of things as she knew them she saw no place for
her individual adventure....

She sat in her chair without undressing till faint grey streaks began
to divide the black slats of the shutters. Then she stood up and pushed
them open, letting in the light. The coming of a new day brought a
sharper consciousness of ineluctable reality, and with it a sense of the
need of action. She looked at herself in the glass, and saw her face,
white in the autumn dawn, with pinched cheeks and dark-ringed eyes, and
all the marks of her state that she herself would never have noticed,
but that Dr. Merkle's diagnosis had made plain to her. She could not
hope that those signs would escape the watchful village; even before her
figure lost its shape she knew her face would betray her.

Leaning from her window she looked out on the dark and empty scene; the
ashen houses with shuttered windows, the grey road climbing the slope to
the hemlock belt above the cemetery, and the heavy mass of the Mountain
black against a rainy sky. To the east a space of light was broadening
above the forest; but over that also the clouds hung. Slowly her gaze
travelled across the fields to the rugged curve of the hills. She had
looked out so often on that lifeless circle, and wondered if anything
could ever happen to anyone who was enclosed in it....

Almost without conscious thought her decision had been reached; as her
eyes had followed the circle of the hills her mind had also travelled
the old round. She supposed it was something in her blood that made the
Mountain the only answer to her questioning, the inevitable escape
from all that hemmed her in and beset her. At any rate it began to loom
against the rainy dawn; and the longer she looked at it the more clearly
she understood that now at last she was really going there.

XVI

THE rain held off, and an hour later, when she started, wild gleams of
sunlight were blowing across the fields.

After Harney's departure she had returned her bicycle to its owner at
Creston, and she was not sure of being able to walk all the way