Gay flitted home like a little shadow through the melancholy moonlight of the late autumn night. The distant hills were cold and eerie in the chill radiance. The sea moaned hollowly down on the beach. A lonely wind was looking for something and moaning pitifully because it could not find it. It was a dead world... everything was dead... youth, hope and love were dead. But if Noel's letter only said what it might say there would be an immediate resurrection. Spring would come back even in grey November and her poor, cold, dead, little heart would beat again. If Noel would only come back to her. She did not care how much he had hurt her... how rottenly he had used her... if he would only come back. Her pride was only for the world. She had no pride as far as Noel was concerned. Only a dreadful longing to have him back.
She went to her room, when she reached Maywood, and laid the letter on the table. Then sat down and looked at it. She was afraid to open it. She dared not open it yet... she would let herself hope a little longer. She thought of that evening in June when she had gone from Aunt Becky's levee to read Noel's letter among the ferns in the shadowy hollow of that little wayside nook. There had been no fear then. How could a few short months have made such a difference in anybody's life? She wondered dumbly if she could possibly ever have been the happy girl of the lovely apple-blossom- time. Then a whole universe of wonder had been hers, with the Milky Way for a lover's path. Now it had shrunk to a little room where a pale girl sat staring with piteous dilated eyes at a letter she was afraid to open.
She recalled the first time she had got a letter from Noel... all the "first times." The first time they had met... the first time she had danced with him... the first time he had called her "Gay"... the first time his smooth, flushed cheek had rested against hers... the first time she had poked her fingers through a little gold curl falling down on his forehead and saw it glistening on her hand like a ring of troth... the first time he had said, "I love you."
And then the first time she had doubted him... such a little, little doubt like a tiny stone thrown into a pool. The ripples had widened and widened until they touched the farthest shores of mistrust. And now she could not open her letter.
"I won't be such a coward any longer," said Gay passionately. She snatched it up and opened it. For a few minutes she looked at it. Then she laid it down and looked around her. The room was just the same. It seemed indecent that it should be just the same. She walked a little unsteadily to the open window and sat down on a chair.
Noel had asked her to release him from his engagement. He was "very sorry" but it would be foolish "to let a boyish mistake ruin three lives." He had "thought he loved her" but now he "realized that he had not known then what love was." There was a good deal more of this... Noel had so many apologies and excuses that Gay didn't bother to read them all. What did they matter? She knew what was in the letter now.
She sat at her window all night. She could not sleep and she did not want to sleep. It would be so terrible to awake and remember again. There was nothing in the world but cold, pale moonlight. Would she ever forget that dreadful white, unpitying moon above the waiting woods... the mournful sound of the wind rustling the dead leaves on the trees, this chilly November night? There was nothing left for her in life... nothing... nothing. It was just as the Moon Man had warned her... she had been too happy.
She thought the night would never end. Yet when the trees began to shiver in the wind of dawn she shrank from it. She could not bear this dawn... all other dawns she could bear but not this one. And it was such a wonderful dawn... a thing of crimson and gold and quivering splendour... of flames and wings and mystery... such a dawn as should break only over a happy world on a happy morning for happy people. It was an insult to her misery.
"I could live through this morning if there were to be no more mornings," thought Gay drearily. Those interminable mornings, stretching before her, year after year, year after year, till she was old and lean and faded and bitter like Mercy Penhallow. The very thought of them made Gay feel desperate. She shivered.
"Will I ever get used to pain?" she thought.
Gay told her mother quite calmly that afternoon that she had broken her engagement with Noel. Mrs Howard wisely said very little and less wisely made Gay's favourite cake with spice frosting for supper. It did not heal Gay's broken heart; it only made Gay hate spice cake for the rest of her life.
Mercy recommended fresh air and an iron tonic. William Y. said he hoped Noel Gibson would get enough of that little wasp of a Nan before she was through with him.
"Remember you're a Penhallow. They don't wear their hearts on their sleeves," cautioned Cousin Mahala kindly. Gay looked at her with sick eyes. She had gone on smiling, that day, before the clan until she could smile no more. But she did not mind Cousin Mahala seeing into her soul. Cousin Mahala UNDERSTOOD.
"Cousin Mahala, HOW can I go on living? Just tell me how... that's all I want to know now. Because I HAVE to live, it seems."
Cousin Mahala shook her head.
"I can't... nobody can. And you'd only think me heartless and unfeeling if I told you you'd get over this. But I will tell you something I've never told any one before. Do you see that little field over there between Drowned John's farm and the shore road? Well, I lay there among the clover all night, thirty years ago, agonizing because Dale Penhallow didn't want me. I didn't see how I was to go on living either. And now I never pass that field without thanking my lucky stars he didn't."
Gay shrank into herself. After all, Cousin Mahala didn't understand. Nobody understood.
Nobody but Roger. Roger came along that evening to find Gay huddled on the veranda steps in the twilight, feeling like some poor little cat freezing before a merciless locked door. She looked up at him with her terrible, tortured young eyes, over the fur of her collar as he sat down beside here, her face one little, white, pinched note of pain... the face that was meant for laughter.
"Gay... my poor little Gay," he cried. "What have they been doing to you?"
Gay laid her tired head down on his shoulder.
"Roger," she whispered, "will you take me for a drive in your car? A FAST drive... I don't care how fast... a long drive... I don't care how long... right through the sunset if you like... and DON'T TALK TO ME."
They had their long and fast drive... so fast that they nearly ran over Uncle Pippin at the turn of the Indian Spring road. He skipped nimbly out of their way and looked after them, chuckling.
"So Roger's out for the rebound," he said. "He always was a cool sort of devil. Knew how to wait."
But Uncle Pippin didn't understand either. Roger just then was feeling that it would be a delightful sensation to find Noel Gibson's throat between his fingers. And Gay wasn't feeling anything. She was numb. But that was better than suffering. She seemed to leave pain behind her as she swooped along the road, the lights flashing on dark woods and tossing trees and frosted ferns and alluring dunes... on... on... on through the night... across the world... not having to talk... not having to smile... conscious only of the sweep of free, cold wind in her face and Roger's dark strength beside her at the wheel. This big, quiet, gentle Roger, with his softly luminous eyes and his slim brown hands. It seemed the most natural thing in the world that he should be there beside her. When they went back... when they stopped... pain would run to meet her again. But this relief was blessed. If they need only never stop... if they could go on and on like this forever... over the hills... down into the valleys of night... along the windy shores of starlit rivers... past the curls of foam on long, shadowy beaches, in the beautiful darkness that was like a cool draught for a fevered soul to drink! If only they need never turn back!