The blood throbbed at her brain and the quickened circulation warmed
her till she loosened the cloak at her throat and wondered, in a dazed
sort of way, why she had put it on on such a stifling night. Then she
remembered the snow and eagerly uplifted her flushed cheeks that the
falling flakes might cool them.
But of the icy grip of the storm she was wholly unconscious. There was
a mad exhilaration in facing the wild elements on such a night, the
exertion of forcing through the storm chimed in with her mood; each
snowdrift through which she fought her way was so much cruel injustice
beaten down. She felt that she had the strength and courage to walk to
the end of the earth and she went on and on, never thinking of the
storm, or her destination, or where she would rest that night. Her
head felt light, as if she had been drinking wine, and more than once
she stopped to mop the perspiration from her forehead. How absurd for
the snow to fall on such a sultry night, and foolish of those people
who had turned her out to die, thinking it was cold--the thermometer
must be 100. She paused to get her breath; a blast of icy wind caught
her cape, and almost succeeded in robbing her of it, and the chill
wrestled with the fever that was consuming her, and she realized for
the first time that it was cold.
"Well, what next?" she asked herself, throwing back her head and
unconsciously assuming the attitude of a creature brought to bay but
still unconquered.
"What next?" She repeated it with the dull despair of one who has
nothing further to fear in the way of suffering. The Fates had spent
themselves on her, she no longer had the power to respond. Suppose she
should become lost in a snowdrift? "Well, what did it matter?"
Then came one of those unaccountable clearings of the mental vision
that nature seems to reserve for the final chapter. Her quickened
brain grasped the tragedy of her life as it never had before. She saw
it with impersonal eyes. Anna Moore was a stranger on whose case she
could sit with unbiased judgment. Her mind swung back to the football
game in the golden autumn eighteen months ago, and she heard the cheers
and saw the swarms of eager, upturned faces and the dots of blue and
crimson, like flowers, in a great waving field. What a panorama of
life, and force, and struggle it had been! How typical of life, and
the end--but no, the end was not yet; there must be some justice in
life, some law of compensation. God must hear at last!