CHAPTER XVIII
IT was when Reba Jerome no longer required her marriage as an escape that it swooped down upon her as a possible yoke and restriction. When Aunt Augusta returned from Machias, she assumed toward Reba, a "do-as-you-please," "I-wash-my-hands-of-you" manner, which left Reba wonderfully free. Again established in the little oblong room up among flat, pebble-strewn roofs, the city, with all its hidden ecstasies and buried treasures again hers, Reba's marriage, which a few weeks ago had been balm and soothing salve, became a nettle—a tiny sliver, beneath her flesh, reminding her of its presence now and again with a little sharp, surprising, needle-like prick.
She had married the strange man of the sea for freedom, and freedom was hers without him! The sailor's gold ring, hidden, here in Boston, in a deep corner of the top tray of her hump-backed trunk (Mamie had such seeing eyes) became a symbol of vague foreboding and alarm. Back again in the inspiring atmosphere of class-rooms, reaching out to untried joys, Miss Katherine Park once more her high and shimmering ideal, the sailor—stoop-shouldered, shuffling, ill-at-ease, hiding his big red hands in his baggy coat-pockets, fell across Reba's shining path like a shadow.
"But never mind, never mind," she told herself, shutting her eyes tight to the shadow. "No use cross-
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