ELLEN TERHUNE
521
afraid to pass the place; I must even be not afraid to go back there, but
I must not go back in response to that pull which was itself a fear.
All the rest of the week and the week following, then, I went out for
my walk every day, and I several times glanced in at Vallombrosa, where
I could not see that anything was changed-though I believe I did not
look very closely. I still had my bad moments at night after the painful
importunings of dreams and during stretches of those solitary strolls which
had now become daily trails. But by the end of the second week I was
imagining that the pressure was lighter. I had had
t~ro
untormented
nights, and I set out on Saturday afternoon with something like ease and
indifference.
I walked first along a little back road that ran parallel with the
regular motor-road on which the Terhune house faced-a road that lay
back of their place with a neighbor's estate between them and it; then I
turned down a hedge-lined lane that connected with the larger road, real–
izing as I did so that I had lately never taken these lanes. I heard some–
thing drive in behind me and drew over close to the hedge, but it was
something that ran very lightly, and I did not at first look round. A horse
stopped in front of me: I looked up and saw a lady in a varnished yellow
phaeton, who seemed to be speaking to me. "Oh, how do you do," I
replied with an instinctive familiarity that preceded conscious recognition.
"You should have let us know you were coming today," she said as she
reached down her gloved hand. She was slimmer and brisker and trimmer
than when I had seen her before. She was wearing a tight dress of a
brown-and-green plaid, with a beautiful hour-glass waist and no bustle
or ruffle to encumber the skirt, and a pretty little straw bonnet, which was
tied under her chin with a big green bow.
I got in at her invitation, as if
it
were a matter of course, and she
drove on sitting up very straight between the gracefully scrolling wicker
fenders and behind the slim long·lashed whip that stood upright in its
socket. I was occupied for the first few minutes in fitting my story to my
role: there was a passage in the conversation where we almost lost con–
nections when I had to explain that I had walked instead of having them
meet me at the train because I enjoyed walking, then found out that the
train only stopped at a place eight or nine miles away: I was forced to
confess, laughing nervously, that I had only been boasting before, that a
farmer had brought me part way. And I did not notice at first that we were
driving through a landscape that seemed totally new to me. We had
turned out of the lane to the right through a gate I had not known was
there, and now were trotting along a driveway which should have led to
the house next-door to the Bristeads; but there was no house there; instead,
the drive curved around thr(!ugh a wide expanse of lawn that was not
anywhere broken
by
a hedge or a fence. We approached a new-looking
yellow house and drew up under a porte-cochere.
r
realized suddenly and
queerly that we were back at the Terhune house. I said that I hadn't
knoWl1
about·this driveway that connected with the other road. "Yes: the
