condition to which she had been approximating, all her relations were
rudely shaken and upset. It really seemed to this simple-minded young
woman that the revolutionary disturbance of settled conditions might
have as Providential an origin as the "Divine Right" of which she had
heard so much.


CHAPTER IV


In her desire to be alone and to evade the now significant attentions
of Emile, she took advantage of the bustle that followed the hurried
transfer of furniture and articles from the house to escape through the
garden to the outlying fields. Striking into one of the dusty lanes that
she remembered, she wandered on for half an hour until her progress and
meditation were suddenly arrested. She had come upon a long chasm or
crack in the soil, full twenty feet wide and as many in depth, crossing
her path at right angles. She did not remember having seen it before;
the track of wheels went up to its precipitous edge; she could see
the track on the other side, but the hiatus remained, unbridged and
uncovered. It was not there yesterday. She glanced right and left; the
fissure seemed to extend, like a moat or ditch, from the distant road to
the upland between her and the great wheat valley below, from which she
was shut off. An odd sense of being in some way a prisoner confronted
her. She drew back with an impatient start, and perhaps her first real
sense of indignation. A voice behind her, which she at once recognized,
scarcely restored her calmness.

"You can't get across there, miss."