ked worse than usual, although he evinced such unwonted
energy. He trembled like a very old man. He ate scarcely anything, and
his mouth was set hard with a desperate expression. James wished to urge
him to remain at home, but he did not dare. Gordon, when he left the
breakfast-table, proposed that James should take Clemency with him, but
the girl replied curtly that she was too busy. Gordon started on his
long circuit, and James set off to make the rounds of Alton and
Westover. The mare seemed in a very favorable mood that morning. She did
not balk, and went at a good pace. It was not until James was on his
homeward road that the trouble began. Then the mare planted her four
feet at angles, in her favorite fashion, and became as immovable as a
horse of bronze. James touched her with the whip. He was in no patient
mood that morning. Finally he lashed her. He might as well have lashed a
stone, for all the effect his blows had. Then he got out and tried
coaxing. She did not seem to even see him. Her great eyes had a curious
introspective expression. Then he got again into the buggy and sat
still. A sense of obstinacy as great as the animal's came over him.
"Stand there and be d----d!" he said.

"Go without your dinner if you want to." He leaned back in a corner of
the buggy, and began reflecting.

His reflections were at once angry and gloomy. He was, he told himself,
tired of the situation. He began to wonder if he ought not, for the sake
of self-respect, to leave Alton and Clemency. He wondered if a man ought
to submit to be so treated, and yet he recognized Clemency's own view of
the situation, and a great wave of love and pity for the poor child
swept over him. The mare had halted in a part of the road where there
were no houses, and flowering alders filled the air with their faint
sweetness. Under that sweetness, like the bass in a harmony, he could
smell the pines in the woods on either hand. He also heard their voices,
like the waves of the sea. It was a very warm day, one of those days in
which Spring makes leaps toward Summer. James felt uncomfortably heated,
for the buggy was in the full glare of sunlight. All his solace came
from the fact that he himself, sitting there so quietly, was outwitting
the mare by showing as great obstinacy as her own. He knew that she
inwardly fretted at not arousing irritation. That a tickle, even a lash
of the whip, would delight her. He sat still, leaning his head back. He
was al