I promised I'd play for the next
chorus--Alice Clow has such a headache."
She was gone--oh, thank God, she was gone! Rilla was alone again,
staring out at the unchanged, dream-like beauty of moonlit Four Winds.
Feeling was coming back to her--a pang of agony so acute as to be
almost physical seemed to rend her apart.
"I cannot bear it," she said. And then came the awful thought that
perhaps she could bear it and that there might be years of this hideous
suffering before her.
She must get away--she must rush home--she must be alone. She could
not go out there and play for drills and give readings and take part in
dialogues now. It would spoil half the concert; but that did not matter
--nothing mattered. Was this she, Rilla Blythe--this tortured thing,
who had been quite happy a few minutes ago? Outside, a quartette was
singing "We'll never let the old flag fall"--the music seemed to be
coming from some remote distance. Why couldn't she cry, as she had cried
when Jem told them he must go? If she could cry perhaps this horrible
something that seemed to have seized on her very life might let go. But
no tears came! Where were her scarf and coat? She must get away and hide
herself like an animal hurt to the death.
Was it a coward's part to run away like this? The question came to her
suddenly as if someone else had asked it. She thought of the shambles of
the Flanders front--she thought of her brother and her playmate helping
to hold those fire-swept trenches.
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