Diverging Roads

was crowded with memories of him. Here they had stopped to gather poppies; there, just beside the gray stone, he had knelt one day to tie her shoe. On the little bridge shaded by the oak-trees they always stopped to lean on the rail and watch their reflections shot across by ripples of light in the stream below. She was dazzled by the beauty of the world as she went by all these places. The sky was blue. It was a revelation to her. She had never known that skies were blue with that heart-shaking blueness or that hills held golden lights and violet shadows on their green slopes. She had never seen that shadows in the late afternoon were purple as grapes, and that the very air held a faint tinge of orange light. It seemed to her that she had been blind all her life.

She stood some time on the little bridge, looking at all this loveliness, and she said his name to herself, under her breath “Paul.” A quiver ran along her nerves at the sound of it.

He would be busy handling baggage at the station when Number Five came in. She thought of his sturdy shoulders in the blue work-shirt, the smooth forehead under his ragged cap, the straight-looking blue eyes and firm lips. She would stand a little apart, by the window where the telegraph-keys were clicking, and he would pass, pushing a hand-truck through the crowd on the platform. Their eyes would meet, and the look would be like a bond subtly uniting them in an intimacy unperceived by the oblivious people who jostled them. Then she would go away, walking slowly through the town, and he would overtake her on his way home to supper. She could tell him, then, about the frost. Her thoughts went no further than that. They stopped with Paul.

But before she reached his house she saw Sammy Harner frolicking in the road, hilarious in the first spring freedom of going barefoot. He skipped from side to side, his wide straw hat flapping; he shied a stone at a bird; he whistled shrilly between his teeth. When he saw her he sobered quickly and came trotting down the road, reaching her, panting.

“I was coming out to your house just ’s fast as I could,” he said. “I got a note for you.” He sought anxiously in his pockets, found it in the crown of his hat. “He gave me a nickel, and said to wait if they’s an answer.”

She saw that his eyes were fixed curiously on her hands, which shook so with excitement that she could hardly tear the railway company’s yellow envelope. She read:

Dear Friend Helen:

I have got a new job and I have to go to Ripley tonight where I am going to work. I would like to see you before I go, as I do not know when I can come back, but probably not for a long time. I did not know I was going till this afternoon and I have to go on the Cannonball. Can you meet me about eight o’clock by the bridge? I have to pack yet and I am afraid I cannot get time to come out to your house and I want to see you very much. Please answer by Sammy.

Your Friend, Paul.

Sammy’s interested gaze had shifted from her hands to her face. It rested on her like an unbearable light. She could not think with those calm observant eyes upon her. She must think. What must she think about? Oh, yes, an answer. A pencil. She did not have a pencil.

“Tell him I didn’t have a pencil,” she said. “Tell him I said, ‘Yes.’ ” And as Sammy still lingered, watching her with unashamed curiosity, she added sharply, “Hurry! Hurry up now!”

It was a relief to sit down, when at last Sammy had disappeared around the bend in the road. The whirling world seemed to settle somewhat into place then. She had never thought of Paul’s going away. She wondered dully if it were a good job, and if he were glad to go.

III

She came down the road again a little after seven o’clock. It was another cold night, and the stars glittered frostily in a sky almost as black as the hills. The road lost itself in darkness before her, and the fields stretched out into a darkness that seemed illimitable, as endless as the sky. She felt herself part of the night and the cold.

For an eternity she walked up and down the road, waiting. Once she went as far as the top of the hill beyond the bridge, and saw shining against the blackness the yellow lights of his house. She looked at them for a long time. She thought that she would watch them until he came out. But she was driven to walking up and down, up and down, stumbling in the ruts of the road. At last she saw him coming, and stood still in the pool of darkness under the oaks until he reached her.

“Helen?” he said uncertainly. “Is it you?”

“Yes,” she answered. Her throat ached.

“I came as quick as I could,” he said. Somehow she knew that his throat ached, too. They moved to the little railing of the bridge and stood trying to see each other’s faces in the gloom. “Are you cold?” he asked.

“No,” she said. She saw then that the shawl had slipped from her shoulders and was dragging over one arm. The wind fluttered it, and her hands were clumsy, trying to pull it back into place.

“Here,” he was taking off his coat. “No,” she said again. But she let him wrap half the coat around her. They stood close together in the folds of it. The chilly wind flowed around them like water, and the warmth of their trembling bodies made a little island of cosiness in a sea of cold.

“I got to go,”