“Going out again Senath?” he asked, seeing that she went for her hat and shawl, u and not a mouthful have you eaten!  Find your old father dull company hey?  Well, well!”

She said something about needing the air; the mill was hot; she should soon be back; she spoke tenderly and she spoke truly, but she went out into the windy sunset with her little trouble, and forgot him.  The old man, left alone, sat for a while with his head sunk upon his breast.  She was all he had in the world,—­this one little crippled girl that the world had dealt hardly with.  She loved him; but he was not, probably would never be, to her exactly what she was to him.  Usually he forgot this.  Sometimes he quite understood it, as to-night.

Asenath, with the purpose only of avoiding Dick, and of finding a still spot where she might think her thoughts undisturbed, wandered away over the eastern bridge, and down to the river’s brink.  It was a moody place; such a one as only apathetic or healthy natures (I wonder if that is tautology!) can healthfully yield to.  The bank sloped steeply; a fringe of stunted aspens and willows sprang from the frozen sand:  it was a sickening, airless place in summer,—­it was damp and desolate now.  There was a sluggish wash of water under foot, and a stretch of dreary flats behind.  Belated locomotives shrieked to each other across the river, and the wind bore down the current the roar and rage of the dam.  Shadows were beginning to skulk under the huge brown bridge.  The silent mills stared up and down and over the streams with a blank, unvarying stare.  An oriflamme of scarlet burned in the west, flickered dully in the dirty, curdling water, flared against the windows of the Pemberton, which quivered and dripped, Asenath thought, as if with blood.

She sat down on a gray stone, wrapped in her gray shawl, curtained about by the aspens from the eye of passers on the bridge.  She had a fancy for this place when things went ill with her.  She had always borne her troubles alone, but she must be alone to bear them.

She knew very well that she was tired and nervous that afternoon, and that, if she could reason quietly about this little neglect of Dick’s, it would cease to annoy her.  Indeed, why should she be annoyed?  Had he not done everything for her, been everything to her, for two long, sweet years?  She dropped her head with a shy smile.  She was never tired of living over these two years.  She took positive pleasure in recalling the wretchedness in which they found her, for the sake of their dear relief.  Many a time, sitting with her happy face hidden in his arms, she had laughed softly, to remember the day on which he came to her.  It was at twilight, and she was tired.  Her reels had troubled her all the afternoon; the overseer was cross; the day was hot and long.  Somebody on the way home had said in passing her:  “Look at that girl!  I’d kill myself if I looked like that”:  it was in a whisper, but she heard it.  All life looked hot and long; the reels would always be out of order; the overseer would never be kind.  Her temples would always throb, and her back would ache.  People would always say, “Look at that girl!”