“Don’t you stop me, mother.  I am not going to have him turned out this way,” she said.  Her father advanced threateningly, but she set her young, strong shoulders against him and pushed past out of the door.  The door was slammed to after her and the bolt shot, but she did not heed that.  She ran across the yard, calling:  “Barney!  Barney!  Barney!  Come back!” Barnabas was already out in the road; he never turned his head, and kept on.  Charlotte hurried after him.  “Barney,” she cried, her voice breaking with sobs—­“Barney, do come back.  You aren’t mad at me, are you?” Barney never turned his head; the distance between them widened as Charlotte followed, calling.  She stopped suddenly, and stood watching her lover’s dim retreating back, straining with his rapid strides.

“Barney Thayer,” she called out, in an angry, imperious tone, “if you’re ever coming back, you come now!”

But Barney kept on as if he did not hear.  Charlotte gasped for breath as she watched him; she could scarcely help her feet running after him, but she would not follow him any farther.  She did not call him again; in a minute she turned around and went back to the house, holding her head high in the dim light.

She did not try to open the door; she was sure it was locked, and she was too proud.  She sat down on the flat, cool door-stone, and remained there as dusky and motionless against the old gray panel of the door as the shadow of some inanimate object that had never moved.

The wind began to rise, and at the same time the full moon, impelled softly upward by force as unseen as thought.  Charlotte’s fair head gleamed out abruptly in the moonlight like a pale flower, but the folds of her mottled purple skirt were as vaguely dark as the foliage on the lilac-bush beside her.  All at once the flowering branches on a wide-spreading apple-tree cut the gloom like great silvery wings of a brooding bird.  The grass in the yard was like a shaggy silver fleece.  Charlotte paid no more attention to it all than to her own breath, or a clock tick which she would have to withdraw from herself to hear.

A low voice, which was scarcely more than a whisper, called her, a slender figure twisted itself around the front corner of the house like a vine.  “Charlotte, you there?” Charlotte did not hear.  Then the whisper came again.  “Charlotte!”

Charlotte looked around then.

A slender white hand reached out in the gloom around the corner and beckoned.  “Charlotte, come; come quick.”

Charlotte did not stir.

“Charlotte, do come.  Your mother’s dreadful afraid you’ll catch cold.  The front door is open.”

Charlotte sat quite rigid.  The slender figure began moving towards her stealthily, keeping close to the house, advancing with frequent pauses like a wary bird.  When she got close to Charlotte she reached down and touched her shoulder timidly.  “Oh, Charlotte, don’t you feel bad?  He’d ought to know your father by this time; he’ll get over it and come back,” she whispered.