She had bowed definitely; she had
bowed charmingly. And it seemed to Bibbs that she must have meant
to convey her forgiveness.
There had been something in her recognition of him unfamiliar to
his experience, and he rode the warmer for it. Nor did he lack the
impression that he would long remember her as he had just seen her:
her veil tumultuously blowing back, her face glowing in the wind
--and that look of gay friendliness tossed to him like a fresh rose
in carnival.
By and by, upon a rising ground, the driver halted the car, then
backed and tacked, and sent it forward again with its nose to the
south and the smoke. Far before him Bibbs saw the great smudge upon
the horizon, that nest of cloud in which the city strove and panted
like an engine shrouded in its own steam. But to Bibbs, who had
now to go to the very heart of it, for a commanded interview with
his father, the distant cloud was like an implacable genius issuing
thunderously in smoke from his enchanted bottle, and irresistibly
drawing Bibbs nearer and nearer.
They passed from the farm lands, and came, in the amber light of
November late afternoon, to the farthermost outskirts of the city;
and here the sky shimmered upon the verge of change from blue to
gray; the smoke did not visibly permeate the air, but it was there,
nevertheless--impalpable, thin, no more than the dust of smoke.
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