He alighted, bade
"Good-by" to the party, and the team turned to retrace its course. But
in that single moment she had been struck and bewildered by what
seemed to her the dazzlingly beautiful apparel of the women, and their
prettiness. She felt a sudden consciousness of her own coarse, shapeless
calico gown, her straggling hair, and her felt hat, and a revulsion
of feeling seized her. She crept like a wounded animal out of the
underwood, and then ran swiftly and almost fiercely back towards the
cabin. She ran so fast that for a time she almost kept pace with the
doctor and Hoskins in the wagon on the distant trail. Then she dived
into the underwood again, and making a short cut through the
forest, came at the end of two hours within hailing distance of the
cabin,--footsore and exhausted, in spite of the strange excitement that
had driven her back. Here she thought she heard voices--his voice
among the rest--calling her, but the same singular revulsion of feeling
hurried her vaguely on again, even while she experienced a foolish
savage delight in not answering the summons.
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