She held her way to the Square, which, as
all the world knows, is of great extent and open to the encircling
street. The trees and grass-plats had begun to bud and sprout, the
fountains plashed in the sunshine, the children of the quarter, both the
dingier types from the south side, who played games that required much
chalking of the paved walks, and much sprawling and crouching there,
under the feet of passers, and the little curled and feathered people
who drove their hoops under the eyes of French nursemaids--all the
infant population filled the vernal air with small sounds which had a
crude, tender quality, like the leaves and the thin herbage. Olive
wandered through the place, and ended by sitting down on one of the
continuous benches. It was a long time since she had done anything so
vague, so wasteful. There were a dozen things which, as she was staying
over in New York, she ought to do; but she forgot them, or, if she
thought of them, felt that they were now of no moment. She remained in
her place an hour, brooding, tremulous, turning over and over certain
thoughts. It seemed to her that she was face to face with a crisis of
her destiny, and that she must not shrink from seeing it exactly as it
was. Before she rose to return to Tenth Street she had made up her mind
that there was no menace so great as the menace of Basil Ransom; she had
accepted in thought any arrangement which would deliver her from that.
If the Burrages were to take Verena they would take her from Olive
immeasurably less than he would do; it was from him, from him they would
take her most.
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