The Romance of a Plain Man by Ellen Glasgow

We carried her home next day in George's motor car, ploughing with difficulty over the heavy roads, which in a month's time would have become impassable. A golden morning had followed the rain; the sun shone clear, the wind sang in the bronzed tree-tops, and on the low hills to the right of us, the harvested corn ricks stood out illuminated against a deep blue sky. When the brown-winged birds flew, as they sometimes did, across the road, her eyes measured their flight with a look in which there was none of the radiant impulse I had seen on that afternoon when she gazed after the flying swallows. She spoke but seldom, and then it was merely to thank me when I wrapped the fur rug about her, or to reply to a question of George's with a smile that had in it a touching helplessness, a pathetic courage. And this helplessness, this courage, brought to my memory the sound of her voice when she had called George's name aloud in her terror.

Even after we had reached home, and when she and I stood alone, for a minute, before the fire in her room, I felt still that something within her -- something immaterial and flamelike that was her soul -- turned from me, seeking always a clearer and a diviner air.