All through the interview, even when she had overheard Elnathan's
confidences to Perez, at the door, her cheeks had not betrayed her by
a trace of unusual color, but now as she hurried home across the
fields, they burned with shame, and she fairly choked to think of the
vulgar familiarity to which she had submitted, and the abject attitude
she had assumed to this farmer's son. She remembered well enough that
childish kiss, and saw in his eyes that he remembered it. This
perception had added the last touch to her humiliation.

But Perez went out and wandered into the wood-lot and sat down on a
fallen tree, and stared a long time into vacancy with glowing eyes. He
had dreamed of Desire a thousand times during his long absence from
home, but since his return, so vehement had been the pressure of
domestic troubles, so rapid the rush of events, that he had not had
time to once think of her existence, up to the moment when she had
confronted him there in the kitchen, in a beauty at once the same, and
so much more rare, and rich and perfect, than that which had ruled his
boyish dreams.

Presently he went down to the tavern. The crowd of men and boys on the
green received him with quite an ovation. Shaking hands right and left
with the men, he went on to the tavern, and finding Abner smoking on
the bench outside the door, drew him aside and asked him to see that
there was no demonstration in front of Woodbridge's that evening.
Abner grumbled a little.

"O' course I'm sorry for the woman, if she's sick, but they never
showed no considerashun fer our feelin's, an I don' see wy we sh'd be
so durn tender o' theirn. I shouldn't be naow, arter they'd treated a