"To-morrow night," he had said, smiling at her with one meaning in his
words, "to-morrow night you will understand."
"Yes," she now said to herself, with another meaning in hers,
"to-morrow night I must understand. Until to-morrow night, then,
blinded and bewildered with holly and cedar let me be! Kind
ignorance, enfold me and spare me! All happiness that I can control or
conjecture, come to me and console me!"
And over herself she dropped a vesture of joy to greet him when he
should step forth.
It was a pleasant afternoon to be out of doors and to go about what
they had planned; the ground was scarcely frozen, there was no wind,
and the whole sky was overcast with thin gray cloud that betrayed no
movement. Under this still dome of silvery-violet light stretched the
winter land; it seemed ready and waiting for its great festival.
The lawn sloped away from the house to a brook at the bottom, and
beyond the brook the ground rose to a woodland hilltop. Across the
distance you distinguished there the familiar trees of blue-grass
pastures: white ash and black ash; white oak and red oak; white walnut
and black walnut; and the scaly-bark hickory in his roughness and the
sycamore with her soft leoparded limbs.
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