Edith Wharton - Penn State University

Summersome chance word, some unconscious allusion, seemedto thrust her back across the gulf.Never had it yawned so wide as when she fled up to herroom carrying with her the echo of Mr. Royall’s tale. Herfirst confused thought was the prayer that she might neversee young Harney again. It was too bitter to picture him asthe detached impartial listener to such a story. “I wish he’dgo away: I wish he’d go tomorrow, and never come back!”she moaned to her pillow; and far into the night she laythere, in the disordered dress she had forgotten to take off,her whole soul a tossing misery on which her hopes anddreams spun about like drowning straws.OF ALL THIS TUMULT only a vague heart-soreness was leftwhen she opened her eyes the next morning. Her firstthought was of the weather, for Harney had asked her totake him to the brown house under Porcupine, and thenaround by Hamblin; and as the trip was a long one theywere to start at nine. The sun rose without a cloud, andearlier than usual she was in the kitchen, making cheesesandwiches, decanting buttermilk into a bottle, wrappingup slices of apple pie, and accusing Verena of having givenaway a basket she needed, which had always hung on ahook in the passage. When she came out into the porch, inher pink calico, which had run a little in the washing, butwas still bright enough to set off her dark tints, she hadsuch a triumphant sense of being a part of the sunlight andthe morning that the last trace of her misery vanished. Whatdid it matter where she came from, or whose child shewas, when love was dancing in her veins, and down theroad she saw young Harney coming toward her?Mr. Royall was in the porch too. He had said nothing atbreakfast, but when she came out in her pink dress, thebasket in her hand, he looked at her with surprise. “Whereyou going to?” he asked.“Why—Mr. Harney’s starting earlier than usual today,”she answered.“Mr. Harney, Mr. Harney? Ain’t Mr. Harney learned howto drive a horse yet?”She made no answer, and he sat tilted back in his chair,drumming on the rail of the porch. It was the first time hehad ever spoken of the young man in that tone, and Char-38