still. Anything!--anything but to be forced to go back!

But on Monday it was the urgency of going back that confronted her. She
had come down in the morning to find her breakfast laid in just the way
she liked it--tea, a soft-boiled egg, buttered toast, and, as a special
temptation to a capricious appetite, a dab of marmalade. She sat down to
the table unwillingly, sipping at the tea and nibbling at the toast, but
leaving the egg and the marmalade untouched. In her mother's bustling to
and fro she felt the long-delayed protest in the atmosphere. It came
while her mother was crossing the room to replace some dishes on the
dresser.

"Now, my girl, buck up. Just eat your breakfast and set to work and stop
your foolish fancies. If you don't look out you'll get yourself where I
was, and I guess it'll take more than Dr. Hilary to pull _you_ out." She
added, as she returned to the kitchen: "Your father told me to tell you
to get busy on the cucumbers. There's a lot to be picked. He's been
spannin' them and finds them ready."

Rosie made use of her privilege of not answering. When she had eaten all
she could she took a basket and made her way toward the cucumber-house
she had not entered since she had left it with the words, "I've quit."
It was like going to the scaffold to drag her feet across the yard; it
was like mounting it to lift the latch of the paintless door and feel
the stifling, pollen-laden air in her face. Nevertheless, habit took her
in. Habit sent her eyes searching among the lowest stretches of the
vines, where the cool, green things were hanging. Habit caused her to
stoop and span them with her rough little hand. When her father's thumb
and fingers met around them they were ready to be picked; they were
ready when her own came within an inch of doing so.

But she raised herself with a rebellious impulse of her whole person
before she had picked one. She had picked hundreds in her time; she had
picked thousands. She couldn't begin again. With the first one she
gathered the yoke of the past would be around her neck once more. She
couldn't bear it. "I can't. I can't." With the words on her lips she
slipped out by the door at the far end of the hothouse and sped toward
her refuge on Duck Rock.

She had never felt it as so truly a refuge before. Neither had she ever
before needed a refuge so acutely. She needed it to-day because the
memory of Claude had at last become a living thing, and every sentient
part of