Explore "Diverging Roads" by Rose Wilder Lane on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
Returning to Coalinga after the meeting with Paul, Helen ached with weariness. But she was alive again. The haze in which she had been existing was gone. She had risen early that morning, met her prospective land-buyer at the train, and made the sale. It had been doubly difficult, because the salesman for Alfalfa Tracts had met the train, too, and had almost taken the prospect from her, thinking it would be easy to do because she was only a woman. There was a hard triumph in her victory. The sale had reduced Bert's debt by another four hundred dollars, for she could afford now to turn in the entire commission against it.
The jolting of the train shook her relaxed body. Her cheek lay against the rough plush of the chairback, for she was too tired to sit upright. Against the black square of the window her life arranged itself before her. How many times she had seen her life lying before her like a straight road, and had determined what its course and end would be! But she was older now, and wiser, and able to control her destiny.