“It’s me, Colonel,” she said.
He glared at her. She was taller and thinner than formerly, darkly transparent of skin, and her dark eyes shone in strange and dusky brilliance. Still indignant and surprised, the Colonel lifted his voice sharply.
‚ÄúWhat the devil are you doing here?‚ÅÝ‚Äîsleeping when you ought to be at work! Get out! And see here, next week cotton chopping begins‚ÅÝ‚Äîyou‚Äôll go to the fields or to the chain-gang. I‚Äôll have no more of your loafing about my place.‚Äù
Awaiting no reply, the Colonel, already half ashamed of his vehemence, stormed out into the sunlight and climbed upon his bay mare.
But Zora still stood silent in the shadow of the Silver Fleece, hearing and yet not hearing. She was searching for the Way, groping for the threads of life, seeking almost wildly to understand the foundations of understanding, piteously asking for answer to the puzzle of life. All the while the walls rose straight about her and narrow. To continue in school meant charity, yet she had nowhere to go and nothing to go with. To refuse to work for the Cresswells meant trouble for the school and perhaps arrest for herself. To work in the fields meant endless toil and a vista that opened upon death.
Like a hunted thing the girl turned and twisted in thought and faced everywhere the blank Impossible. Cold and dreamlike without, her shut teeth held back seething fires within, and a spirit of revolt that gathered wildness as it grew. Above all flew the dream, the fantasy, the memory of the past, the vision of the future. Over and over she whispered to herself: “This is not the End; this can not be the End.”
Somehow, somewhere, would come salvation. Yet what it would be and what she expected she did not know. She sought the Way, but what way and whither she did not know, she dared not dream.