She would go to the Gap and
teach; and then she knew that if she went there it would be on
Hale's account. Very well, she would not blind herself to that
fact; she would go and perhaps all would be made up between them,
and then she knew that if that but happened, nothing else could
matter...
When she reached the miller's cabin, she went to the porch without
noticing that the door was closed. Nobody was at home and she
turned listlessly. When she reached the gate, she heard the clock
beginning to strike, and with one hand on her breast she
breathlessly listened, counting--"eight, nine, ten, eleven"--and
her heart seemed to stop in the fraction of time that she waited
for it to strike once more. But it was only eleven, and she went
on down the road slowly, still thinking hard. The old miller was
leaning back in a chair against the log side of the mill, with his
dusty slouched hat down over his eyes. He did not hear her coming
and she thought he must be asleep, but he looked up with a start
when she spoke and she knew of what he, too, had been thinking.
Keenly his old eyes searched her white face and without a word he
got up and reached for another chair within the mill.
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