She lay down in the afternoon and tried to sleep; but her brain was
inexorably alert, and she lay making inventory of all the pleasant things
she was to leave for that ugly fate she had insisted on. A swarm of fancies
gave every detail of the parting dramatic intensity. Amidst the poignancy
of her regrets, her shame for her recreancy was sharper still.

By night she could bear it no longer. It was Dr. Morrell's custom to come
nearly every night; but she was afraid, because he had walked home with her
from the meeting the night before, he might not come now, and she sent for
him. It was in quality of medicine-man, as well as physician, that she
wished to see him; she meant to tell him all that had passed with Mr. Peck;
and this was perfectly easy in the interview she forecast; but at the sound
of his buggy wheels in the lane a thought came that seemed to forbid her
even to speak of Mr. Peck to him. For the first time it occurred to her
that the minister might have inferred a meaning from her eagerness and
persistence infinitely more preposterous than even the preposterous letter
of her words. A number of little proofs of the conjecture flashed upon her:
his anxiety to get away from her, his refusal to let her believe in her own
constancy of purpose, his moments of bewilderment and dismay. It needed
nothing but this to add the touch of intolerable absurdity to the horror
of the whole affair, and to snatch the last hope of help from her.