Not a creature was in sight, except a red and white cow, a child
gathering buttercups, and a few rooks crossing from one field to
another. It was a glorious day; the sun seemed the very centre of
conscious peace. And now first, strange to say, Helen began to know
the bliss of bare existence under a divine sky, in the midst of a
divine air, the two making a divine summer, which throbbed with the
presence of the creative spirit--but as something apart from her
now, something she had had, but had lost, which could never more be
hers. How could she ever be glad again, with such a frightful fact
in her soul! Away there beyond those trees lay her unhappy brother,
in the lonely house, now haunted indeed. Perhaps he lay there dead!
The horrors of the morning, or his own hand, might have slain him.
She must go to him. She would defy the very sun, and go in the face
of the universe. Was he not her brother?--Was there no help
anywhere? no mantle for this sense of soul-nakedness that had made
her feel as if her awful secret might be read a mile away, lying
crimson and livid in the bottom of her heart. She dared hardly think
of it, lest the very act should betray the thing of darkness to the
world of light around her.
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