That roused her; she got up, sighing, and rubbing her eyes as if
she had been asleep. No decision! ...
Suppose she should go down into the orchard? Away from the house, she
might be better able to put her mind on it. She knew a spot where,
hidden from curious eyes, she could lie at full length in the grass,
warm on a western slope. David might have found her, but no one else
would think of looking for her there.... When she sank down on the
ground and clasped her hands under her head, her eyes were level with
the late-blossoming grass that stirred a little in an unfelt breath of
air; two frosted stalks of goldenrod, nodded and swung back and nodded
again, between her and the sky. With absent intentness, she watched an
ant creeping carefully to the top of a head of timothy, then jolting
off at some jar she could not feel. The sun poured full upon her face;
there was not a cloud anywhere in the unfathomable blue stillness.
Thought seemed to drown in seas of light, and personality dwindled
until her pain and fright did not seem to belong to her. She had to
close her eyes to shut herself into her own dark consciousness:
How should she keep her child?
The simplicity of immediate flight she had, of course, long ago
abandoned; it would only postpone the struggle with William King. That
inflexible face of duty would hunt her down wherever she was, and take
the child from her.
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