Mr. Royall seldom spoke, but his silent presence gave her, for the first
time, a sense of peace and security. She knew that where he was there
would be warmth, rest, silence; and for the moment they were all she
wanted. She shut her eyes, and even these things grew dim to her....
In the train, during the short run from Creston to Nettleton, the warmth
aroused her, and the consciousness of being under strange eyes gave her
a momentary energy. She sat upright, facing Mr. Royall, and stared out
of the window at the denuded country. Forty-eight hours earlier, when
she had last traversed it, many of the trees still held their leaves;
but the high wind of the last two nights had stripped them, and the
lines of the landscape' were as finely pencilled as in December. A
few days of autumn cold had wiped out all trace of the rich fields and
languid groves through which she had passed on the Fourth of July; and
with the fading of the landscape those fervid hours had faded, too. She
could no longer believe that she was the being who had lived them; she
was someone to whom something irreparable and overwhelming had happened,
but the traces of the steps leading up to it had almost vanished.
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