s--she flung out her
arms--perhaps her father--

She ran to the piano as to a refuge, meaning to drown out these
maddening speculations, which were by this time tinctured with
insanity; but the first chords she struck jarred on her ear like a
discordant scream. She turned away and stood looking at the floor with
a darkening face, one hand at her temple.

* * * * *

Her mother, darning stockings by the window, suddenly laid down her
work and said: "Sylvia, how would you like to walk with me over to the
Martins' to see if they have any eggs? Our hens have absolutely gone
back on us."

Sylvia did not welcome this idea at all, feeling as overwhelming an
aversion to companionship as to solitude, but she could think of no
excuse, and in an ungracious silence put on her wraps and joined her
mother, ready on the porch, the basket in her mittened hand.

Mrs. Marshall's pace was always swift, and on that crisp, cold, sunny
day, with the wind sweeping free over the great open spaces of the
plain about them, she walked even more rapidly than usual. Not a word
was spoken. Sylvia, quite as tall as her mother now, and as vigorous,
stepped beside her, not noticing their pace, nor the tingling of the
swift blood in her feet and hands. Her fresh young face was set in
desolate bitterness.

The Martins' house was about six miles from the Marshalls'. It was
reached, the eggs procured, and the return begun. Still not a word had
been exchanged between the two women. Mrs. Marshall would have been
easily capable, under the most ordinary circumstances, of this long
self-contained silence, but it had worked upon Sylvia like a sojourn
in the dim recesses of a church. She felt moved, stirred, shaken. But
it was not until the brief winter sun was beginning to set red
across the open reaches of field and meadow that her poisoned heart
overflowed. "Oh, Mother--!" she exclaimed in an unhappy tone, and said
no more. She knew no words to phrase what was in her mind.

"Yes, dear," said her mother gently. She looked at her daughter
anxiously, expectantly, with a passion of yearning in her eyes, but
she said no more than those two words.

There was a silence. Sylvia was struggling for expression. They
continued to walk swiftly through the cold, ruddy, sunset air, the
hard-frozen road ringing beneath their rapid advance. Sylvia clasped
her hands together hard in her muff. She felt that something in her
heart was dyin