The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Way to Peace, by Margaret Deland

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Title: The Way to Peace

Author: Margaret Deland

Posting Date: January 10, 2009 [EBook #2685]
Release Date: June, 2001

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

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THE WAY TO PEACE

By Margaret Deland

TO LORIN DELAND

KENNEBUNKPORT, MAINE AUGUST 12TH, 1910

I

ATHALIA HALL stopped to get her breath and look back over the road
climbing steeply up from the covered bridge. It was a little after five,
and the delicate air of dawn was full of wood and pasture scents--the
sweetness of bay and the freshness of dew-drenched leaves. In the valley
night still hung like gauze under the trees, but the top of the hill was
glittering with sunshine.

"Why, we've hardly come halfway!" she said.

Her husband, plodding along behind her, nodded ruefully. "Hardly," he
said.

In her slim prettiness Athalia Hall looked like a girl, but she was
thirty-four. Part of the girlishness lay in the smoothness of her white
forehead and in the sincere intensity of her gaze. She wore a blue linen
dress, and there was a little, soft, blue scarf under her chin; her
white hat, with pink roses and loops of gray-blue ribbon, shadowed
eager, unhumorous eyes, the color of forget-me-nots. Her husband was
her senior by several years--a large, loose-limbed man, with a scholarly
face and mild, calm eyes--eyes that were full of a singular tenacity of
purpose. Just now his face showed the fatigue of the long climb up-hill;
and when his wife, stopping to look back over the glistening tops of the
birches, said, "I believe it's half a mile to the top yet!" he agreed,
breathlessly. "Hard work!" he said.

"It will be worth it when I get to the top and can see the view!" she
declared, and began to climb again.

"All the same, this road will be mighty hot when the sun gets full on
it," her husband said; and added, anxiously, "I wish I had made you
rest in the station until train-time." She flung out her hands with an
exclamation: "Rest! I hate rest!"

"Hold on, and I'll give you a stick