about like a bird gone astray. “The end . . . the end. . . .” Her lips now and then whispered it aloud like an empty echo. She sped on mechanically, without thinking, always onward, onward, onward. . . .
The narrow ridge soon came to an end. Lucy entered the highway,—she recognized it,—it was the broad swath of dust that ran between fields, cut through a few villages, now went down, now again rose; here it turned, there it went straight, like an endless strip of cloth, and ran on and on, until at last it appeared on the horizon as a narrow, grey ribbon. The telegraph posts hummed their monotonous song. The rattle of wagons as they passed over it with slow, measured motion, resounded afar.—It was only a few weeks before that she had travelled over that road, full of happiness, to a new life. . .
There below, behind her, lay that town. . . . The curved roofs and the walls of the houses were plainly outlined against the
