Wave above wave of the ever-rising hills were gained, were
crossed, and at last Ruth struggled up to the very top and stood
on the bare table of moor, brown and purple, stretching far away
till it was lost in the haze of the summer afternoon; the white
road was all flat before her, but the carriage she sought, and
the figure she sought, had disappeared. There was no human being
there; a few wild, black-faced mountain sheep, quietly grazing
near the road as if it were long since they had been disturbed,
by the passing of any vehicle, was all the life she saw on the
bleak moorland.
She threw herself down on the ling by the side of the road, in
despair. Her only hope was to die, and she believed she was
dying. She could not think; she could believe anything. Surely
life was a horrible dream, and God would mercifully awaken her
from it? She had no penitence, no consciousness of error or
offence no knowledge of any one circumstance but that he was
gone. Yet afterwards--long afterwards--she remembered the exact
motion of a bright green beetle busily meandering among the wild
thyme near her, and she recalled the musical, balanced, wavering
drop of a skylark into her nest, near the heather-bed where she
lay. The sun was sinking low, the hot air had ceased to quiver
near the hotter earth, when she bethought her once more of the
note which she had impatiently thrown down before half mastering
its contents.
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