She had simply let him understand that
her silence was not accidental by leaving the table while he was still
eating, and going up without a word to shut herself into her room.
After that he formed the habit of talking loudly and genially to Verena
whenever Charity was in the room; but otherwise there was no apparent
change in their relations.
She did not think connectedly of these things while she sat waiting for
Harney, but they remained in her mind as a sullen background against
which her short hours with him flamed out like forest fires. Nothing
else mattered, neither the good nor the bad, or what might have seemed
so before she knew him. He had caught her up and carried her away into
a new world, from which, at stated hours, the ghost of her came back to
perform certain customary acts, but all so thinly and insubstantially
that she sometimes wondered that the people she went about among could
see her....
Behind the swarthy Mountain the sun had gone down in waveless gold. From
a pasture up the slope a tinkle of cow-bells sounded; a puff of smoke
hung over the farm in the valley, trailed on the pure air and was gone.
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