The Readjustment

her serviceable khaki-brown parasol. She was walking directly toward the setting sun, which poured into her ey

dramatic, and yet so profoundly significant, buzzed still in her head. As she thought on them, other things came into her mind as momentous and worthy of attention before the jump of the great event-that moment alone with Bertram Cheste

ts of her life; things by which she owed vengeance of slight wrongs. They came together at length, into one great, sore grievance-the forwardness, the utter, morti

. It seemed to her that her retina still danced with the impression of him as he turned to face her, as he flashed upon her like a drawn weapon. She found herself looking down at the dusty road; suddenly she grew so sick and faint that the breath deserted her body and she had to lean 63 a

o that her oversight might pass on short notice to Olsen or to himself. In this harvest season, for example, he secured for both farms the cutters and pickers-the hardest problem for the Californian farmer. Also, the fruit went to his own sheds and yards for cutting and drying. He was among the sturdy minority who stood 64 out against the co-operative driers which had absorbed most of the fruit crop in the Santa Clara Valley. The detail work about her place-such as setting out the fruit boxes, selecting the mo

So they walked over the orchard together, pressing a golden ball here and there, and decided that the fruit was ripe and ready. Eleanor summoned Antonio for directions about boxes and ladders. The hen-house had to be inspected, for Elean

t manners that she was, she kept up her self-respect by a little ceremony at this meal. She dressed for it usually; at lea

e visit them and share their winter in the studio or their summer on the coast of Brittany. 66 Why, in the face of that alluring invitation, did she suffer her soul to keep her in such prisons as this? She could afford it; there was no question of money. According to the books she had read, that solitary state belonged to old, disappointed bachelors, old maids, faded people generally. Here she sat, a picture unseen, playing at age-and she less than twenty-two. There was a kind of delicate inc

Momentarily, both united to produce one emotion-profound disgust and dislike for the coarseness, the brutality, of male 67 humanity, which had l

ut suddenly. She rose, hurried out of doors, tore into

too dark to find employment out of doors, she hurried back to the house, tried to read. But a sense of confinement drove her forth. She started out toward the road, stopped by the hedg

season, grown accustomed by six years of passing summers 68 and winters, drew no special attention from her. But the noise continued; it became plain that these reveling laborers were making in he

inst the edge of the sky, noised past her and were gone down the road. One couple, she perceived, lingered behind. They had reached the shade of the bay tre

s gentle a little kisser as you ever sa

the girl. But as they drew into deeper s

heavy kissing. In a moment, the white form of the girl broke down the road, the greater, darker form of the man lumbering after. He caught her, held

ust, revulsion, horror. It came as a confused surprise that she felt nothing of the kind. A cloying sweetness, a sensation purely physical, as though a syrup had been poured into all the channels of her nerves, began in

l her own senses, she was praying aloud-praying in the rit

ma!" she was saying