From the valley in the rear it was already
stealing in a thin white line up the slope like the advance of a ghostly
column, with a stealthiness that, in spite of himself, touched him with
superstitious significance. A warm perfume, languid and treacherous--as
from the swamp magnolia--seemed to rise from the half-hidden marsh.
An ominous silence, that appeared to be a part of this veiling of all
things under the clear opal-tinted sky above, was so little like
the hush of rest and peace, that he half-yearned for the outburst of
musketry and tumult of attack that might dispel it. All that he had ever
heard or dreamed of the insidious South, with its languid subtleties of
climate and of race, seemed to encompass him here.
But the next moment he saw the figure he was waiting for stealing
towards him from the shadow of the gulley beneath the negro quarters.
Even in that uncertain light there was no mistaking the tall figure,
the gaudily striped clinging gown and turbaned head. And then a strange
revulsion of feeling, quite characteristic of the emotional side of his
singular temperament, overcame him. He was taking leave of his wife--the
dream of his youth--perhaps forever! It should be no parting in anger as
at Robles; it should be with a tenderness that would blot out their past
in their separate memories--God knows! it might even be that a parting
at that moment was a joining of them in eternity.
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