hom she and her world knew, there stirred
faintly the seeds of that ancient lust of cruelty from which have sprung
the brutal pleasures of men. The part of her--that small secret
part--which was primitive answered to the impulse of jealousy as it did
to the rapturous baying of the hounds out of the red and gold distance.
A branch grazed her cheek; her hat went as she raced down the high banks
of a stream; the thicket of elder tore the ribbon from her head, and
loosened her dark flying hair from its braid. In that desolate country,
in the midst of the October meadows, with the cries of the hounds
rising, like the voice of mortal tragedy, out of the tinted mist on the
marshes, the drama of human passions--which is the only drama for the
world's stage--was played out to an ending: love, jealousy, envy,
desire, desperation, regret--

But when the hunt was over, and she rode home, with a bedraggled brush,
which had once been grey, tied to her bridle, all the gorgeous pageantry
of the autumnal landscape seemed suddenly asking her: "What is the use?"
Her mood had altered, and she felt that her victory was as worthless as
the mud-stained fox's brush that swung mockingly back and forth from her
bridle. The excitement of the chase had ebbed away, leaving only the
lifeless satisfaction of the reward. She had neglected her children, she
had risked her life--and all for the sake of wresting a bit of dead fur
out of Abby's grasp. A spirit which was not her spirit, which was so old
that she no longer recognized that it had any part in her, which was yet
so young that it burned in her heart with the unquenchable flame of
youth--this spirit, which was at the same time herself and not herself,
had driven her, as helpless as a fallen leaf, in a chase that she
despised, towards a triumph that was worthless.

"By Jove, you rode superbly, Virginia! I had no idea you could do it,"
said Oliver, as they trotted into Dinwiddie.

She smiled back at him, and her smile was tired, dust-stained,
enigmatical.

"No, you did not know that I could do it," she answered.

"You'll keep it up now, won't you?" he asked pleadingly.

For an instant, looking away from him over the radiant fields, she
pondered the question. The silence which had settled around her was
unbroken by the sound of the horses' hoofs, by the laughter of the
hunters, by the far-off soughing of the pine trees in the forest; and
into this silence, which seemed to cover an eternity, t