The brave words, striking deep under the surface, rang against the vein of iron in Dorinda's nature. Clear and strong as a bell, she heard the reverberations of character beneath the wild bloom of emotion. Yes, whatever happened, she resolved passionately, no man was going to spoil her life! She could live without Jason; she could live without any man. The shadows of her great-aunts, Dorinda and Abigail, demented victims of love, stretched, black and sinister, across the generations. In her recoil from an inherited frailty, she revolted, with characteristic energy, to the opposite extreme of frigid disdain. "Were all great-grandfather's sisters like that?" she asked hopefully, remembering that he had had six. "Oh, no." Her mother was vague but encouraging. "I don't recollect ever hearing anything foolish about Rebekah and Priscilla, and even the others were sensible enough when they had stopped running after men." Running after men! The phrase was burned with acid into her memory. Was that what her mother, who did not know, would think of her? Was that what Jason, who did know, thought of her now? Her love, which had been as careless in its freedom as the flight of a bird, became suddenly shy and self-conscious. She had promised that she would meet him at Gooseneck Creek after sunset; but she knew now that she could not go, that something stronger than her desire to be with him was holding her back. After her mother had gone she sat there for hours, with her eyes on the lengthening shadows over the pear orchard. This something stronger than her desire was hardening into resolution within her. She would avoid him in the future wherever she could; she would not look for him at the fork of the road; she would go to work an hour earlier and return an hour later in order that she might not appear to throw herself in his way. Already the inevitable battle between the racial temperament and the individual will was beginning, and before the evening was over she told herself that she was victorious. Though her longing drew her like a cord to Gooseneck Creek, and the quiver of her nerves was as sharp as the pain of an aching tooth, she stayed in her mother's chamber until bedtime, and tried unsuccessfully to fix her mind on her great-grandfather's dry sermon on temperance. When the evening was over at last, and she went upstairs to her room, she felt as if the blood had turned back in her veins. In the first fight she had conquered, but it was one of those victories, she knew without admitting the knowledge, which are defeats. IX