Barker walked slowly along the road under the flickering shade of
wayside sycamore, his sensitive face also alternating with his thought
in lights and shadows. Presently there crept towards him out of the
distance a halting, vacillating, deviating buggy, trailing a cloud of
dust after it like a broken wing. As it came nearer he could see that
the horse was spent and exhausted, and that the buggy's sole occupant--a
woman--was equally exhausted in her monotonous attempt to urge it
forward with whip and reins that rose and fell at intervals with feeble
reiteration. Then he stepped out of the shadow and stood in the middle
of the sunlit road to await it. For he recognized his wife.
The buggy came nearer. And then the most exquisite pang he had ever felt
before at his wife's hands shot through him. For as she recognized
him she made a wild but impotent attempt to dash past him, and then as
suddenly pulled up in the ditch.
He went up to her. She was dirty, she was disheveled, she was haggard,
she was plain. There were rings of dust round her tear-swept eyes and
smudges of dust-dried perspiration over her fair cheek. He thought of
the beauty, freshness, and elegance of the woman he had just left, and
an infinite pity swept the soul of this weak-minded gentleman. He ran
towards her, and tenderly lifting her in her shame-stained garments from
the buggy, said hurriedly, "I know it all, poor Kitty! You heard the
news of Van Loo's flight, and you ran over to the Divide to try and save
some of your money.
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