Page:The Strange Case of Miss Annie Spragg (1928).djvu/118

 for the women of the village. She even made an entrance into that trade which all small towns associate with fast women. She became a milliner. But the people of Cordova did not take kindly to her. Her silence and aloofness disturbed them. They came to know presently that she was the daughter of the Prophet Spragg and so they gave her a name for immorality and evil, a reputation which her appearance, despite all her plain and ugly clothes, could not deny. No matter how black her dresses, there was something in the green slanting eyes, the pointed nose, the red hair and the white skin which made women draw together in little groups like hens as she passed and caused men to look after her as if their wills had turned to butter. The wall of her isolation grew higher and higher, shutting her in from all the world. And so she took to going more and more on those solitary walks along the river-bank. The river was the only relief from the monotony of that smoke-hazed world.

Because human companionship was denied her she came to make friends of the birds and the tiny beasts, the flowers and the rare trees of that flat country. The very rabbits came to know her and the birds along the river-bank awaited her coming with the crumbs she brought from her table. It was a happy life and she seemed content with it, living only in dread of the coming of winter. Sometimes when she had gone a long way and could see across the flat land that there was no one within miles of her, she would take off her ugly black dress and tight stays and bathe in a warm sluggish stream, warming her naked body sinfully in the sun-