The Storekeeper

It was now late afternoon, the sun's rays coming slantingly into the
forest, and the warmth of the day past and gone. To Haward, riding at a
gallop down the road that was scarce more than a bridle path, the rush of
the cool air was grateful; the sharp striking of protruding twigs, the
violent brushing aside of hanging vines, not unwelcome.

It was of the man that the uppermost feeling in his mind was one of
disgust at his late infelicity of speech, and at the blindness which had
prompted it. That he had not divined, that he had been so dull as to
assume that as he felt, or did not feel, so must she, annoyed him like the
jar of rude noises or like sand blowing into face and eyes. It was of him,
too, that the annoyance was purely with himself; for her, when at last he
came to think of her, he found only the old, placid affection, as far
removed from love as from hate. If he knew himself, it would always be as
far removed from love as from hate.

All the days of her youth he had come and gone, a welcome guest at her
father's house in London. He had grown to be her friend, watching the
crescent beauty of face and mind with something of the pride and
tenderness which a man might feel for a young and favorite sister; and
then, at last, when some turn of affairs sent them all home to Virginia
to take lot and part there, he had thought of marriage.