She must go down to the ewer in the hall. As she did so,
she recollected her shawl.
It was lying on the wet grass where it had fallen. There was a
half-framed accusing thought that he might have gone for it; but
she put the thought away; the time had passed for courtesies from
him. When she stooped for the shawl, an owl flew viciously at her,
snapping its bill close to her face and stirring the air with its
wings. Unnerved, she ran back into the porch, but stopped there
ashamed and looking kindly toward the tree in which it made its
home.
An old vine of darkest green had wreathed itself about the pillars
of the veranda on that side; and it was at a frame-like opening in
the massive foliage of this that the upper part of her pure white
figure now stood revealed in the last low, silvery, mystical light.
The sinking of the moon was like a great death on the horizon,
leaving the pall of darkness, the void of infinite loss.
She hung upon this far spectacle of nature with sad intensity,
figuring from it some counterpart of the tragedy taking place
within her own mind.
II
Isabel slept soundly, the regular habit of healthy years being too
firmly entrenched to give way at once. Meanwhile deep changes were
wrought out in her.
When we fall asleep, we do not lay aside the thoughts of the day,
as the hand its physical work; nor upon awakening return to the
activity of these as it to the renewal of its toil, finding them
undisturbed.
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