been struggling against it,
struggling with all the tense fierceness of which her spirit was
capable--her spirit that was far too big for the slim body that housed
it. Yet that thought could not be shaken off. She couldn't forget it,
couldn't wipe out the recollection of that great, gaping wound that
had dripped blood from his chin. She tried to close her eyes and shut
it out as she went from task to task that day, and it would not fade.

Somehow it wasn't that man at all whom she remembered as the afternoon
dragged by to its close; it wasn't the big-shouldered body nervelessly
asprawl upon the floor that filled her memory. Instead a picture of an
awkward, half-grown boy flashed up before her--a big, ungainly,
terribly embarrassed boy who turned from watching the mad flight of a
rabbit through the brush to smile at her reassuringly, even though his
face was torn raw from her own nails.

That was the point at which the tide of her chaotic thoughts began to
waver and turn. Long before she realized what she was doing she had
fallen to wondering, with a solicitude that made moist and misty once
more her tip-tilted eyes and softened the thin line of her lips,
whether or not that bruise had been washed out, cleansed and cleanly
bandaged.

When she did realize what that thought meant, it had been too long
with her to be routed. She was too tired to combat it, anyway, too
tired with the reaction of that long, throbbing night to do more than
wonder at herself. Twilight came and the gray mist that had been over
the hills for hours dissolved into rain. With the first hint of
darkness that the storm brought with it she began to watch--to peer
out of the window whenever her busy footsteps carried her past it, at
the bleak place across the hollow. Before it was fairly night she
began to understand that she was not merely watching for the light,
but hoping, praying wordlessly that it might shine. And when her work
was finished she had taken her place there, her slim body in its scant
black skirt and little white blouse hunched boyishly forward as always
across the table.

Even that girl who, after the hours which had been almost cataclysmic
for her, could scarcely have been expected to be able to comprehend it
clearly yet--even she read the meaning of the slackened cords of her
body, of her loosened lips and wet eyes. As long as she could she had
fed the flame within her soul--fed it with every bitter thought and
harsh judgment w