Page:Maud Howe - Atlanta in the South.djvu/142

 herself to her modelling with an impassioned energy. She had neglected her bas-relief, and had been living more in other people and less in herself than ever before. The men and women by whom she found herself surrounded were dangerous rivals to her profession. In her Northern home there were no idle people; and if she had wished to loiter over the life-path, she would perforce have done so alone. Here she found friends, quick-sympathied and warm-hearted, who had understood her in a week as the old home-friends had never understood her in a lifetime. She was conscious that the difference lay not wholly in the people, but somewhat also in herself. These simpler, warmer-blooded folks, with their pride, their prejudices, their quick anger, their quicker remorse, their deadly feuds and emotional friendships, melted her New England reserve as the April sun thaws the lingering frost from the arbutus-roots in the dim Maine woods. But now the horror at a crime which to her was not lightened by any sanction of custom, threw her back upon herself and her work. Those who spoke about the duel called it "a most unfortunate accident," "a fatal result which, happily, did not often attend such an affair of honor." Men standing in high positions were pointed out to her as having crossed swords beneath the great oaks of the duelling-ground in