VII.
Riding slowly down the road from Five Oaks to Gooseneck Creek, Dorinda watched the few sheep browsing among the lengthening shadows of the October afternoon. Beyond them the life-everlasting broke in silver waves against the dim blue horizon. Over the whole landscape, with its flat meadows, its low rounded hill in the east, its crawling rust-coloured roads, hung a faint, hazy drift, as inaudible as the dying quiver of insects. Passing at a walk on her white horse against the rich autumn sunset, she reached the log bridge at the creek and kept on toward the fork of the road. She had taken the longer way home in order that she might inspect the new gate which William Fairlamb had finished. Round her, as evanescent as the last flare of day, there was this quivering haze, which was half
