Elspeth, walking by Glenfernie,
felt kindness for him. If, also, there ran a tremor of feeling that it
was very fair to be Elspeth Barrow and walking so, she was young and
it was natural. But beyond that was a sense, vague, unexplained to
herself, but disturbing. There was feeling in him that was not in her.
She was aware of it as she might be aware of a gathering storm, though
the brain received as yet no clear message. She felt, struggling with
that diffused kindness and young vanity, something like discomfort and
fear. So her mood was complex enough, unharmonized, parted between
opposing currents. She was a riddle to herself.
But Glenfernie walked in a great simplicity of faeryland or heaven.
She did not love Robin Greenlaw; she was not so young a lass, with a
rose in her cheek for every one; she was come so far without mating
because she had snow in her heart! The palace gleamed, the palace
shone. All the music of earth--of the world--poured through. The sun
had drunk up the mist, time had eaten the thorn-wood, the spider at
the gate had vanished into chaos and old night.
CHAPTER X
The cows and sheep and work-horses, the dogs, the barn-yard fowls, the
very hives of bees at White Farm, seemed to know well enough that it
was the Sabbath. The flowers knew it that edged the kitchen garden,
the cherry-tree knew it by the southern wall.
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