Excerpt from The Inevitable: A Novel It was out in nature's lap of greenery that a snake became the go-between of fate. All Missouri could not have shown a scene more fair. The level meadow was a firmament for flowers, in which the winding brook made a willowy way. Southward and westward the woods were thick, silent, and fragrant. Sunshine and clouds hung in the sky together. Everywhere the bees and locusts hummed of summer. The warm breeze fanned slowly by, over grass and blossoms, with wanton June indolence. The calm, the odor of moist new grass, the balminess, made the day a perfect thing. The sleepy little town was a mile away. Therefore it appeared as if Genevra had all that theatre of beauty to herself. She was only a slip of a girl, an interesting, freckled child, with hair the color of nugget gold. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.