The touch of the dog seemed to bring
her closer to his master; she put him away; she dared not suffer
even that treachery to her purpose: the very circumstances that
had forced her to give him up made it weak cowardice to turn
again. It was a simple story, yet one which she dared not tell
to herself; for it was not altogether for her father's sake she
had made the sacrifice. She knew, that, though she might be near
to this man Holmes as his own soul, she was a clog on him,--stood
in his way,--kept him back. So she had quietly stood aside,
taken up her own solitary burden, and left him with his clear
self-reliant life,--with his Self, dearer to him than she had
ever been. Why should it not be dearer? She
thought,--remembering the man as he was, a master among men: fit
to be a master. She,--what was she compared to him? He was back
again; she must see him. So she stood there with this persistent
dread running through her brain.
Suddenly, in the lane by the house, she heard a voice talking to
Joel,--the huckster-girl. What a weak, cheery sound it was in
the cold and fog! It touched her curiously: broke through her
morbid thought as anything true and healthy should have done.
"Poor Lois!" she thought, with an eager pity, forgetting her own
intolerable future for the moment, as she gathered up some
breakfast and went with it down the lane. Morning had come;
great heavy bars of light fell from behind the hills athwart the
banks of gray and black fog; there was shifting, uneasy,
obstinate tumult among the shadows; they did not mean to yield to
the coming dawn.
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