Ethan Frome, Summer, Bunner Sisters by Edith Wharton

the contrast, had given him something of her own ease and freedom; but now he felt as heavy and loutish as in his student days, when he had tried to ‘jolly’ the Worcester girls at a picnic.
    He hung back, and she came out alone and paused within a few yards of him. She was almost the last to leave the hall, and she stood looking uncertainly about her as if wondering why he did not show himself. Then a man’s figure approached,coming so close to her that under their formless wrappings they seemed merged in one dim outline.
    ‘Gentleman friend gone back on you? Say, Matt, that’s tough! No, I wouldn’t be mean enough to tell the other girls. I ain’t as low-down as that.’ (How Frome hated Denis’s banter!) ‘But look at here, ain’t it lucky I got the old man’s cutter down there waiting for us?’
    Frome heard the girl’s voice, gaily incredulous: ‘What on earth’s your father’s cutter doin’ down there?’
    ‘Why, waiting for me to take a ride. I got the roan colt too. I kinder knew I’d want to take a ride to-night,’ Eady, in his triumph, tried to put a sentimental note into his bragging voice.
    The girl seemed to waver, and Frome saw her twirl the end of her scarf irresolutely about her fingers. Not for the world would he have made a sign to her, though it seemed to him that his life hung on her next gesture.
    ‘Hold on a minute while I unhitch the colt,’ Denis called to her, springing toward the shed.
    She stood perfectly still, looking after him, in an attitude of tranquil expectancy torturing to the hidden watcher. Frome noticed that she no longer turned her head from side to side, as though peering through the night for another figure. She let Denis Eady lead out the horse, climb into the cutter and fling back the bearskin to make room for her at his side; then, with a swift motion of flight, she turned about and darted up the slope toward the front of the church.
    ‘Good-bye! Hope you’ll have a lovely ride!’ she called back to him over her shoulder.
    Denis laughed, and gave the horse a cut that brought him quickly abreast of her.
    ‘Come along! Get in quick! It’s as slippery as thunder on this turn,’ he cried, leaning over to reach out a hand.
    She laughed back at him: ‘Good-night! I’m not getting in.’
    By this time they had passed beyond Frome’s earshot and he could only follow the shadowy pantomime of their silhouettes as they continued to move along the crest of the slopeabove him. He saw Eady, after a moment, jump from the cutter and go toward the girl with the reins over one arm. The other he tried to slip through hers; but she eluded him nimbly, and Frome’s heart, which had swung out over a black void, trembled back to safety. A moment later he heard the jingle of departing sleigh bells and discerned a figure advancing alone toward the empty expanse of snow before the church.
    In the black shade of the Varnum spruces he caught up with her and she turned with a quick ‘Oh!’
    ‘Think I’d forgotten you, Matt?’ he asked with sheepish glee.
    She answered seriously: ‘I thought maybe you couldn’t come back for me.’
    ‘Couldn’t? What on earth could stop me?’
    ‘I knew Zeena wasn’t feeling any too good to-day.’
    ‘Oh, she’s in bed long ago.’ He paused, a question struggling in him. ‘Then you meant to walk home all alone?’
    ‘Oh, I ain’t afraid!’ she laughed.
    They stood together in the gloom of the spruces, an empty world glimmering about them wide and grey under the stars. He brought his question out.
    ‘If you thought I hadn’t come, why didn’t you ride back with Denis Eady?’
    ‘Why, where
were
you? How did you know? I never saw you!’
    Her wonder and his laughter ran together like spring rills in a thaw. Ethan had the sense of having done something arch and ingenious. To prolong the effect he groped for a dazzling phrase, and brought out, in a growl of rapture: ‘Come along.’
    He slipped an arm through hers, as Eady had