Mother and daughter hurried down the path, chattering to each other, like two angry squirrels.

“Horrid, stuck-up thing,” I heard Celie say spitefully, as they went through the fence.  “I hope Grace Draper does take him away from her.  She’s got a nerve, I must say, talkin’ to us like that.  I don’t believe she cares anything about her husband, anyway.”

She might have changed her mind had she seen me fly to my room as soon as she was safely out of sight, lock the door, and bury my face in the pillows, that neither my mother-in-law nor Katie should hear the sobs I could not repress.

“Dicky!  Dicky!  Dicky!” I moaned.  “Have I really lost you?”

Of course I knew better than to believe the statement of the elopement.  I had seen and heard enough of village life to realize how the slightest circumstance was magnified by the community loafers.  That Dicky and the girl took the same train, going and coming from the city, was a fact borne out by my own observations.  I had remarked Dicky’s regularity in catching the 8:21 in the mornings, something so opposed to his usual unpunctual habits, and wondered why.  Now I had the solution.

I told myself, dully, that I was not surprised; that I had really known all along something like this was coming.  My thoughts went back to the night, a few weeks before, when I had suffered a similar paroxysm of grief over Dicky’s evident interest in the girl.  Then all my doubts and fears had been swept away in Dicky’s arms on the moonlit veranda.  I caught my breath as I realized in all its miserable certainty the impossibility of any such tender scene now.  Dicky and I seemed as far apart emotionally as the poles.

But the determination I had reached that other night, before Dicky’s voice and caresses dispelled my doubts, I made my own again.  There was nothing for me to do but to wait quietly, with dignity, until I was absolutely certain that Dicky no longer loved me.  Then I would go out of his life without scenes or recriminations.  I would not lift a finger to hold him.

By the time I had gained control of myself once more, Dicky came home.

“Letter for you,” he said, “from the office of your old principal.”

He tossed it into my lap, eyeing it and me curiously.  I knew that his desire to know what was in it had made him remember to give it to me.  His mother, who had opened her door at his step, came forward eagerly.  I opened the letter, to find an offer of my old school position.  My principal wrote that the woman who was appointed to the position had been suddenly taken ill and could not possibly fill it.  He asked me to write him my decision at once, as it was within a few days of the opening of the school.

Mechanically, I read it aloud.  My brain was whirling.  I wondered if, perhaps, this was the way out for me.  If Dicky really did not love me any longer, I ought to accept this position, even if by taking it I broke my agreement with the Lotus Study Club.