Page:Caroline Lockhart--The Fighting Shepherdess.djvu/69

 FOR ALWAYS

not keep back fell on the horse's mane as she drooped a little over the saddle-horn.

She looked down through dimmed eyes upon the lights streaming from the windows of the Prouty House, as they climbed the steep pitch to the bench above town, and the alluring brightness increased the aching heaviness of her heart, for she felt that she was leaving all they represented behind her forever. She knew she never could find the courage to risk going through such an ordeal again.

A childhood without playmates had created a longing for companionship that was pathetic in its eagerness, and the yearning had not been modified by the isolation and monotony of her present life. To dance, to be merry, to have the opportunity to please, seemed the most im- portant thing in the world to the girl and now she seemed to realize, in mutinous despair, that through no fault of her own she was going to be cheated of that which was her right — of that which was every girl's right — to have the pleasures which belonged to her years.

Kate's standards were the standards of the old west and of the mountains and plains, which take only personal worth into account, so she did not yet comprehend clearly what it was all about. She herself had done nothing to merit such treatment from people whose names she did not even know. She rode for a long time without speak- ing, trying, in her tragic bewilderment, to puzzle it out. The silence was in painful contrast to the high spirits in which they had ridden into town. Then, they had L found so much to talk about, so much to anticipate — and it had all turned out to be so different, so far re- moved from anything they had dreamed. Each shrank from being the first to broach the subject of their humiliating retreat.

53