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.
One thing alone lay in her wild fancy like a great and wonderful fact dragging the dream to earth and anchoring it there. That was the Silver Fleece.
Like a brooding mother, Zora had watched it. She knew how the gin had been cleaned for its pressing and how it had been baled apart and carefully covered. She knew how proud Colonel Cresswell was of it and how daily he had visitors to see it and finger the wide white wound in its side.
“Yes, sir, grown on my place, by my niggers, sir!” he assured them; and they marvelled.
To Zora‚Äôs mind, this beautiful baled fibre was hers; it typified happiness; it was an holy thing which profane hands had stolen. When it came back to her (as come it must, she cried with clenched hands) it would bring happiness; not the great Happiness‚ÅÝ‚Äîthat was gone forever‚ÅÝ‚Äîbut illumination, atonement, and something of the power and the glory.