"You aren't worried, Mary?"
"Worried? No. I just feel ... restless. It's the sort of feeling
you get before a storm. As if we were all waiting for something, and
you don't know what."
"You've been upset about this Menning affair."
"It isn't that. I don't know what it is. The place, maybe ... I
always liked woods before, and now I feel as if I should never like
them again." Her grave clear eyes held mine. "Austin, I wish I
knew. If only ... sometimes I almost wish we'd never come to this
place at all."
"Mary, you don't really wish that?"
"No, I don't. I ought to, but I can't. But ... I do wish we were
all away--out of here--somewhere else."
"We shall be, soon enough." I was thinking of the end of my holiday,
the breaking-up of a summer that, if it had brought danger and
ugliness and all but tragedy, had brought also something infinitely
precious into my life--something I was far from ready to lose.
"The summer has done Kate good, anyway. We had a letter from her
this morning."
"Where is she?" I knew that Mrs. Lessing had left a few days before,
to stay with some friends.
"On Long Island. A place on the Sound. We'll probably join her
there in a couple of weeks. I wish you could come--you and Jack
both. I think the sea air would blow sense into all of us!" She
laughed. "I'm talking like an old woman, and I've got Dick's supper
to get and nothing ready! Well, we'll see you tonight."
"Would you rather I stayed?"
"Nonsense! You'll begin to think I'm developing nerves, next!"
She waved her hand as I climbed into the buggy. Gathering up the
reins, I turned the mare's head homeward. It was already nearly
dark, but I could still see the road before me. Was it presage, or
only the desire for Mary's company that made me wish, even before I
had turned the corner by Dutchman's Hill, that I had after all
accepted Lessing's invitation and stayed on?
As I reached the point where the road dipped to the hollow it seemed
to me that I could smell once more that queer unplaceable odour of
which Mary had spoken.