It required effort of will to approach the house.

Yet since she must meet him, the sooner the ordeal was over the better.

Nevertheless she tiptoed past the bright windows, and went all the length of the long porch, and turned around and went back, and then hesitated, fighting a slow drag of her spirit, an oppression upon her heart.

The door was crude and heavy.

It opened hard.
Columbine entered a big room lighted by a lamp on the upper table and by blazing logs in a huge stone fireplace.