Harriett went on to give the town's gossip of how Deane had gone to Indianapolis to see his wife, to try and make it right, but her people were strongly of the feeling that she had been badly treated and it had ended with her going away somewhere with her mother. Harriett sighed heavily as she said she feared it was one of those things that would not be made right.
"I call it the limit!" cried Ted. "The woman must be a fool!"
Harriett sadly shook her head. "You don't understand women, Ted," she said.
"And I don't want to—ifthat'swhat they're like!" he retorted hotly.
"I'm afraid Deane didn't—manage very well," sighed Harriett.
"Who wants to manage such a little fool!" snapped Ted.
"Now, Ted—" she began, but "You make metired, Harriett!" he broke in passionately, and no more was said of it then.
They worked in silence for awhile, Ted raising a great deal of dust in the way he threw things about, Harriett looking through a box of old books and papers, sighing often. Harriett sighed a great deal, it seemed to Ted, and yet something about Harriett made him sorry for her. From across the attic he looked at her, awkwardly sitting on the floor, leaning against an old trunk. She looked tired and he thought with compassion and remorse for the rough way he had spoken to her, of how her baby was only a little more than two months old, that it must be hard for her to be doing the things she was doing that week. Harriett had grown stout; she had that settled look of many women in middle life; she looked as if she couldn't change much—in any way. Well, Ted considered, he guessed Harriett couldn't change much; she was just fixed in the way she was and that was all there was to it. But she did not look happy in those things she had settled into; she looked patient. She seemed to think things couldn't be any different.
She was turning the pages of an old album she had taken from the box of her mother's things she was sorting. "Oh!" she exclaimed in a low voice, bending over the pages. Her tone brought Ted over to her. "A picture of Ruth as a baby," she murmured.
He knelt down and looked over her shoulder into the dusty, old-fashioned album at a picture of a baby a year or so old whose face was all screwed up into a delighted laugh, tiny hands raised up and clenched in the intensity of baby excitement, baby abandonment to the joyousness of existence.
"Shewaslike that," murmured Harriett, a little tremulously. "She was thecrowingestbaby!"
They bent over it in silence for a minute. "Seems pretty tickled about things, doesn't she?" said Ted with a queer little laugh. Harriett sighed heavily, but a moment later a tear had fallen down to one of the baby hands clenched in joyousness; the tear made him forgive the sigh, and when he saw her carefully take the picture from the album and put it in the pocket of her big apron, it was a lot easier, somehow, to go on working with Harriett. It was even easy, after a little, to ask her what he wanted to know about Deane's practice.
It was true, she feared, that the talk had hurt him some. Mrs. Lawrence had stopped having him. It seemed she had taken a great fancy to Amy Franklin and felt keenly for her in this. She had made other people feel that Deane had not been fair or kind and so there was some feeling against him.
"I suppose she can't claim," Ted cried hotly, "that it hurts him as a doctor?"
"No," Harriett began uncertainly, "except that a doctor—of course the personal side of things—"
"Now, there yougo, Harriett," he interrupted furiously. "You make metired! If it wasn't that you've a sneaking feeling for Ruth you'd fall for such a thing yourself!"
"There's no use trying to talk to you, Ted," said Harriett patiently.
Two days later the house was about dismantled. Ted was leaving the next day for the West. He was so sick of the whole thing that it had gone a little easier toward the last, blunted to everything but getting things done. When Harriett, her eyes reddened, came downstairs with adolland wanted to know if he didn't think Ruth might like to have it, saying that it was the doll Ruth had loved all through her little girl days, and that she had just come upon it where her mother had carefully packed it away, he snatched the doll from her and crammed it into the kitchen stove and poked at it savagely to make it burn faster. Then he slammed down the lid and looked ruthlessly up at Harriett with, "We've had about enough of this sobbing around overjunk!"
Harriett wanted him to come over to her house that last night but he said he'd either go home with one of the fellows or bring one of them home with him. She did not press it, knowing how little her brother and her husband liked each other.
He went to the theatre that night with a couple of his friends. He was glad to go, for it was as good a way as he could think of for getting through the evening. They were a little early and he sat there watching the people coming in; it was what would be called a representative audience, the society of the town, the "best people" were there. They were people Ted had known all his life; people who used to come to the house, people his own family had been one with; friends of his mother came in, associates of his father, old friends of Ruth. That gathering of people represented the things in the town that he and his had been allied with. He watched them, thinking of his own going away, of how it would be an entirely new group of people he would come to know, would become one with, thinking of the Hollands, how much they had been a part of it all and how completely they were out of it now. As he saw all these people, such pleasant, good-looking people, people he had known as far back as he could remember, in whose homes he had had good times, people his own people had been associated with always, a feeling of really hating to leave the town, of its being hard to go away, crept up in him. He talked along with the friend next him and watched people taking their seats with a new feeling for them all; now that he was actually leaving them he had a feeling of affection for the people with whom he sat in the theatre that night. He had known them always; they were "mixed up" with such a lot of old things.
Some people came into one of the boxes during the first act and when the lights went up for the intermission he saw that one of the women was Stuart Williams' wife.
He turned immediately to his friends and began a lively conversation about the play, painfully wondering if the fellows he was with had seen her too, if they were wondering whether he had seen her, whether he was thinking about it. His feeling of gentle regret about leaving the town was struck away. He was glad this was his last night. Always something like this! It was forever coming up, making him feel uncomfortable, different, making him wonder whether people were thinking about "it," whether they were wondering whether he was thinking about it.
Through the years he had grown used to seeing Mrs. Williams; he had become blunted to it; sometimes he could see her without really being conscious of "it," just because he was used to seeing her. But now that he had just come home, had been with Ruth, there was an acute new shock in seeing her.
During the first intermission he never looked back after that first glance; but when the house was darkened again it was not at the stage he looked most. From his place in the dress circle across the house he could look over at her, secured by the dim light could covertly watch her. It was hard to keep his eyes from her. She sat well to the front of the box; he could see every move she made, and every little thing about her wretchedly fascinated him. She sat erect, hands loosely clasped in her lap, seemingly absorbed in the play. Her shoulders seemed very white above her gauzy black dress; in that light, at least, she was beautiful; her neck was long and slim and her hair was coiled high on her head. He saw a woman bend forward from the rear of the box and speak to her; it brought her face into the light and he saw that it was Mrs. Blair—Edith Lawrence, Ruth's old chum. He crumpled the program in his hand until his friend looked at him in inquiry; then he smiled a little and carefully smoothed the program out. But when, in the next intermission, he was asked something about how he thought the play was going to turn out, he was at a loss for a suggestion. He had not known what that act was about. And he scarcely knew what the other acts were about. It was all newly strange to him, newly sad. He had a new sense of it, and a new sense of the pity of it, as he sat there that last night watching the people who had been Ruth's and Stuart's friends; he thought of how they had once been a part of all this; how, if things had gone differently it was the thing they would still be a part of. There was something about seeing Edith Lawrence there with Mrs. Williams made him so sorry for Ruth that it was hard to keep himself pulled together. And that house, this new sense of things, made him deeply sorry for Stuart Williams. He knew that he missed all this, terribly missed the things this represented. His constant, off-hand questionings about things—about the growth of the town, whether so and so was making good, who was running this or that, showed how he was missing the things he had turned away from, of which he had once been so promising a part. Here tonight, among the things they had left, something made him more sorry for Ruth and Stuart than he had ever been before. And he kept thinking of the strangeness of things; of how, if there had not been that one thing, so many things would have been different. For their whole family, for the Williams' family, yes, for Deane Franklin, too, it would have been all different if Ruth had just fallen in love with some one else. Somehow that seemed disloyalty to Ruth. He told himself she couldn't help it. He guessedshegot it the worst; everything would have been different, easier, for her, certainly, if she, like the other girls of her crowd, had fallen in love with one of the fellows she could have married. Then she would be there with Edith Lawrence tonight; probably they would be in a box together.
It was hard, even when the lights were up, to keep his eyes from that box where Ruth's old friend sat with Mrs. Williams. He would seem to be looking the house over, and then for a minute his eyes would rest there and it would be an effort to let go. Once he found Mrs. Williams looking his way; he thought she saw him and was furious at himself for the quick reddening. He could not tell whether she was looking at him or not. She had that cool, composed manner she always had. Always when he met her so directly that they had to speak she would seem quite unperturbed, as if he stirred in her no more feeling than any other slight acquaintance would stir. She was perfectly poised; it would not seem that he, what he must suggest, had any power to disturb her.
Looking across at her in the house darkened for the last act, covertly watching her as she sat there in perfect command of herself, apparently quite without disturbing feeling, he had a rough desire to know what she actuallydidfeel. A light from the stage surprised her face and he saw that it showed it more tired than serene. She looked bored; and she did not look content. Seeing her in that disclosing little shaft of light—she had drawn back from it—the thought broke into the boy's mind—What'sshegetting out of it!
He had never really considered it purely in the light of what it must be to her. He thought of her as a hard, revengeful woman, who, because hurt herself, was going to harm to the full measure of her power. He despised the pride, the poise, in which she cloaked what he thought of as her hard, mean spirit; he thought people a pretty poor sort for admiring that pride. But now, as he saw her face when she was not expecting it to be clearly seen, he wondered just what she was actually like, just what she really felt. It would seem that revenge must be appeased by now; or at least that that one form of taking it—not getting a divorce—must have lost its satisfaction. It would not seem a very satisfying thing to fill one's life with. And what else was there! Whatwasshe getting out of it! The question gave him a new interest in her.
Caught in the crowd leaving the theatre he watched her again for a moment, standing among the people who were waiting for motors and carriages. The thin black scarf around her head blew back and Edith Lawrence adjusted it for her. Her car came up and one of the men helped her into it. There was a dispute; it seemed someone was meaning to go with her and she was protesting that it was not necessary. Then they were saying goodnight to her and she was going away alone. He watched the car for a moment as it was halted by a carriage, then skirted it and sharply turned the corner.
He had intended to take one of his friends home with him, had thought it would be too dismal alone there in the bare place that last night. But now he did not want anyone with him, did not want to have to talk. Though when he let himself in the front door he wished he was not alone. It was pretty dismal to be coming into the abandoned house. He had a flashing sense of how absolutely empty the place was—empty of the people who had lived there, empty even of those people's things. There was no one to call out to him. His step made a loud noise on the bare stairs. He went back down stairs for a drink of water; he walked through the living-room, the dining-room, the kitchen. There used to be people there—things doing. Not any more. A bare house now—so empty that it wasqueer. He hurried back upstairs. At the head of the stairs he stood still and listened to the stillness from the bedrooms. Then he shook himself angrily, stamped on to his own room, loudly banged the door behind him and whistled as he hurriedly got ready for bed.
He tried to go right to sleep, but could not get sleepy. He was thinking of the house—of things that had gone on there. He thought of Ruth and Stuart—of the difference they had made in that house. And he kept thinking of Mrs. Williams, thinking in this new way of the difference it must have meant to her, must have made inherhouse. He wondered about the house she had just gone home to, wondered if she got lonely, wondered about the feeling there might be beneath that manner of not seeming to mind. He wondered just what it was made her keep from getting a divorce. And suddenly the strangest thought shot into his mind—Had anyone everaskedher to get a divorce!
Then he laughed; he had to make himself laugh at the preposterousness of his idea. The laugh made such a strange sound in the bare room that he lay there very still for a moment. Then loudly he cleared his throat, as if to show that he was not afraid of making another noise.
But the house was so strangely still, empty in such a queer way; it was too strange to let him go to sleep, and he lay there thinking of things in a queer way. That preposterous idea kept coming back. Maybe nobody everhadasked her to get the divorce; maybe it had just been taken for granted that she would be hard, would make it as hard as she could. He tried to keep away from that thought, something made him want to keep away from it, but he could not banish that notion that there were people who would be as decent as it was assumed they would be. He had noticed that with the fellows. Finally he got a little sleepy and he had a childish wish that he were not alone, that it could all be again as it had been long ago when they were all there together—before Ruth went away.
He slept heavily toward morning and was at last awakened by the persistent ringing of the doorbell. It was a special delivery letter from Ruth. She said she hoped it would catch him before he started West. She wanted him to stop in Denver and see if he could get one of those "Jap" men of all work. She said: "Maggie Gordon's mother has 'heard' and came and took her home. I turn to the Japanese—or Chinese, if it's a Chinaman you can get to come,—as perhaps having less fear of moral contamination. Do the best you can, Ted; I need someone badly."
He was to leave at five o'clock that afternoon. The people whom he saw thought he was feeling broken up about leaving; he had to hold back all feeling, they thought; it was that made his face so set and queer and his manner so abrupt and grim.
He had lunch with Harriett. She too thought the breaking up, the going away, had been almost too much for him. She hated to have him go, and yet, for his sake, she would be glad to have it over.
At two o'clock he had finished the things he had to do. He had promised to look in on a few of his friends and say good-by. But when he waited on the corner for the car that would take him down town he knew in his heart that he was not going to take that car. He knew, though up to the very last he tried not to know, that he was going to walk along that street a block and a half farther and turn in at the house Stuart Williams had built. He knew he was not going to leave Freeport without doing that. And when he stood there and let the car go by he faced what he had in his heart known he was going to do ever since reading Ruth's letter, turned and started toward Mrs. Williams', walking very fast, as if to get there before he could turn back. He fairly ran up the steps and pushed the bell in great haste—having to get it pushed before he could refuse to push it.
When he could not get away, after the maid had let him in and he had given his name and was waiting in the formal little reception room, he was not only more frightened than he had ever been in his life, but frightened in a way he had never known anything about before. He sat far forward on the stiff little French chair, fairly afraid to let his feet press on the rug. He did not look around him; he did not believe he would be able to move when he had to move; he knew he would not be able to speak. He was appalled at the consciousness of what he had done, of where he was. He would joyfully have given anything he had in the world just to be out doors, just not to have been there at all. There was what seemed a long wait and the only way he got through it was by telling himself that Mrs. Williams would not see him. Of course she wouldn't see him!
There was a step on the stairs; he told himself that it was the maid, coming to say Mrs. Williams could not see him. But when he knew there was someone in the doorway he looked up and then, miraculously, he was on his feet and standing there bowing to Mrs. Williams.
He thought she looked startled upon actually seeing him, as if she had not believed it was really he. There was a hesitating moment when she stood in the doorway, a moment of looking a little as if trying to overcome a feeling of being suddenly sick. Then she stepped forward and, though pale, had her usual manner of complete self-possession. "You wished to see me?" she asked in an even tone faintly tinged with polite incredulity.
"Yes," he said, and was so relieved at his voice sounding pretty much all right that he drew a longer breath.
She looked hesitatingly at a chair, then sat down; he resumed his seat on the edge of the stiff little chair.
She sat there waiting for him to speak; she still had that look of polite incredulity. She sat erect, her hands loosely clasped; she appeared perfectly poised, unperturbed, but when she made a movement for her handkerchief he saw that her hand was shaking.
"I know I've got my nerve to come here, Mrs. Williams," he blurted out.
She smiled faintly, and he saw that as she did so her lip twitched.
"I'm leaving for the West this afternoon. I'm going out there to live—to work." That he had said quite easily. It was a little more effort to add: "And I wanted to see you before I went."
She simply sat there waiting, but there was still that little twitching of her lip.
"Mrs. Williams," he began quietly, "I don't know whether or not you know that I've been with my sister Ruth this summer."
When she heard that name spoken there was a barely perceptible drawing back, as when something is flicked before one's eyes. Then her lips set more firmly. Ted looked down and smoothed out the soft hat he was holding, which he had clutched out of shape. Then he looked up and said, voice low: "Ruth has come to mean a great deal to me, Mrs. Williams."
And still she did not speak, but sat very straight and there were two small red spots now in her pale cheeks.
"And so," he murmured, after a moment, "that's why I came to you."
"I think," she said in a low, incisive, but unsteady voice, "that I do not quite follow."
He looked at her in a very simple, earnest way. "You don't?" he asked. There was a pause and then he said, "I saw you at the theatre last night."
"Indeed?" she murmured with a faint note of irony.
But she did not deflect him from that simple earnestness. "And when I went home I thought about you." He paused and then added, gently, "Most all night, I thought about you."
And still she only sat there looking at him and as if holding herself very tight. She had tried to smile at that last and the little disdainful smile had stiffened on her lips, making them look pulled out of shape and set that way.
"I said to myself," Ted went on, "'What'sshegetting out of it?'" His voice came up on that; he said it rather roughly.
Her face flamed. "Ifthisis what you have come here to say—" she began in a low angry voice. "If this is what you have intruded into my house for—you—!" She made a movement as if about to rise.
Ted threw out his hand with a little gesture of wanting to explain. "Maybe I shouldn't have put it that way. I hope I didn't seem rude. I only meant," he said gently, "that as I watched you you didn't look as though you were happy."
"And what if I'm not?" she cried, as if stung by that. "What if I'm not? Does that give you any right to come here and tell me so?"
He shook his head, as if troubled at again putting things badly. "I really came," he said, in a low earnest voice, "because it seemed to me it must be that you did not understand. It occurred to me that perhaps no one had ever tried to make you understand. I came because it seemed fairer—to everybody."
Something new leaped into her eyes. "I presume it was suggested to you?" she asked sharply.
"No, Mrs. Williams, it was not suggested to me." As she continued to look at him with suspicion he colored a little and said quietly: "You will have to believe that, because I give you my word that it is true."
She met the direct look of his clear hazel eyes and the suspicion died out of her own. But new feeling quickly flamed up. "And hasn't it occurred to you," she asked quiveringly, "that you are rather a—well, to be very mild indeed, rather a presumptuous young man to come to me, to come into my house, withthis?" There was a big rush of feeling as she choked: "Nobody's spoken to me like this in all these years!"
"That's just the trouble," said Ted quickly, as if they were really getting at it now. "That's just the trouble."
"What do you mean?" she asked sharply.
"Why—just that. Nobody has talked to you about it. Everybody has been afraid to, and so you've just been let alone with it. Things get worse, get all twisted up, get themselves into a tight twist that won't come out when we're shut up with them." His face looked older as he said, "I know that myself." He meditated upon that an instant; then, quickly coming back to her, looked up and added gently: "So it seemed to me that maybe you hadn't had a fair show just because everybody has been afraid of you and let you alone."
Her two trembling hands were pulling at her handkerchief. Her eyes were very bright. "And you aren't afraid of me?" she asked with a little laugh that seemed trying to be mocking but was right on the edge of tears.
He shook his head. "That is," he qualified it with a slight smile, "not much—now." Then he said, as if dropping what they were talking about and giving her a confidence: "While I was waiting for you I was so scared that I wished I could drop dead."
His smile in saying it was so boyish that she too dropped the manner of what they were talking about and faintly smiled back at him. It seemed to help her gain possession of herself and she returned to the other with a crisp, "And so, as I understand it, you thought you'd just drop in and set everything right?"
He flushed and looked at her a little reproachfully. Then he said, simply, "It seemed worth trying." He took a letter from his pocket. "I got this from my sister this morning. The girl who has been working for her has gone away. Her mother came and took her away. She had 'heard.' They're always 'hearing.' This has happened time after time."
"Now just let me understand it," she began in that faintly mocking way, though her voice was shaking. "You propose that I do something to make the—the servant problem easier for your sister. Is that it? I am to do something, you haven't yet said what, to facilitate the domestic arrangements of the woman who is living with my husband. That's it, isn't it?" she asked with seeming concern.
He reddened, but her scoffing seemed to give him courage, as if he had something not to be scoffed at and could produce it. "It can be made to sound ridiculous, can't it?" he concurred. "But—" he broke off and his eyes went very serious. "You never knew Ruth very well, did you, Mrs. Williams?" he asked quietly.
The flush spread over her face. "We were not intimate friends," was her dry answer, but in that voice not steady.
He again colored, but that steady light was not driven from his eyes. "Ruth's had a terrible time, Mrs. Williams," he said in a quiet voice of strong feeling. "And if you had known her very well—knew just what it is Ruth is like—it seems to me you would have to feel sorry for her."
She seemed about to speak again in that mocking way, but looking at his face—the fine seriousness, the tender concern—she kept silence.
"And just what is it you propose that I do?" she asked after a moment, as if trying to appear faintly amused.
Very seriously he looked up at her. "It would help—even at this late day—if you would get a divorce."
She gasped; whether she had been prepared for it or not she was manifestly unprepared for the simple way he said it. For a moment she stared at him. Then she laughed. "You are a most amazing young man!" she said quiveringly.
As he did not speak, but only looked at her in that simple direct way, she went on, with rising feeling, "You come here, tome, into my house, proposing that—in order to make things easier for your sister in living with my husband—I get a divorce!"
He did not flinch. "It might do more than make things easier for my sister," he said quietly.
"What do you mean?" she demanded sharply.
"It might make things easier for you."
"And what do you mean bythat?" she asked in that quick sharp way.
"It might make things easier," he said, "just to feel that, even at this late day, you've done the decent thing."
She stood up. "Do you know, young man, that you've said things to me that are outrageous to have said?" She was trembling so it seemed hard to speak. "I've let you go on just because I was stupified by your presumption—staggered, and rather amused at your childish audacity. But you've gone a little too far! Howdareyou talk to me like this?" she demanded with passion.
He had moved toward the door. He looked at her, then looked away. His control was all broken down now. "I'm sorry to have it end like this," he muttered.
She laughed a little, but she was shaken with the sobs she was plainly making a big effort to hold back. "I'm so sorry," he said with such real feeling that the tears brimmed from her eyes.
He stood there awkwardly. Somehow her house seemed very lonely, comfortless. And now that her composure was broken down, the way she looked made him very sorry for her.
"I don't want you to think," he said gently, "that I don't see how bad it has been for you."
She tried to laugh. "You don't think your sister was very—fair to me, do you?" she asked chokingly, looking at him in a way more appealing than aggressive.
"I suppose not," he said. "No, I suppose not." He stood there considering that. "But I guess," he went on diffidently, "I don't just know myself—but it seems there come times when being fair gets sort of—lost sight of."
The tears were running down her face and she was not trying to check them.
He stood there another minute and then timidly held out his hand. "Good-by, Mrs. Williams," he said gently.
She took his hand with a queer, choking little laugh and held it very tight for a minute, as if to steady herself.
His own eyes had dimmed. Then he smiled—a smile that seemed to want to go ahead and take any offence or hurt from what he was about to say. "Maybe, Mrs. Williams, that you will come to feel like being fairer to Ruth than Ruth was to you." His smile widened and he looked very boyish as he finished, "And that would beoneway of getting back, you know!"
Freeport had a revival of interest in Mrs. Stuart Williams that fall. They talked so much of her in the first years that discussion had pretty well spent itself, and latterly it had only been rarely—to a stranger, or when something came up to bring it to them freshly—that they did more than occasionally repeat the expressions which that first feeling had created. There was no new thing to say of their feeling about her. No one had become intimate with her in those years, and that itself somehow kept the picture. She was unique, and fascinated them in the way she was one of them and yet apart. The mystery enveloping her made it mean more than it could have meant through disclosures from her. It kept it more poignant to speculate about a concealed suffering than it could have continued to be through discussing confidences. But even speculation as to what was beneath that unperturbed surface had rather talked itself out, certainly had lost its keen edge of interest with the passing of the years.
That fall, however, they began to speak of a change in her. They said first that she did not look well; then they began to talk about her manner being different. She had always kept so calm, and now there were times when she appeared nervous. She had had throughout a certain cold serenity. Now she was sometimes irritable, disclosing a fretfulness close under the untroubled surface. She looked older, they said; her brows knit and there were lines about mouth and eyes. She seemed less sure of herself. It made interest in her a fresh thing. They wondered if she were not at last breaking, spoke with a careful show of regret, concern, but whetted anticipations gave eagerness to voices of sympathy. They wondered if Ruth Holland's having come home in the Spring, the feeling of her being in the town, could have been too much of a strain, preying upon the deserted wife and causing her later to break. There were greedy wonderings as to whether she could possibly have seen Ruth Holland, whether anything had happened that they did not know about.
Late one December afternoon Mrs. Williams came home from a church bazaar and curtly telephoned that she would not be back for the evening. She spoke of a headache. And her head did ache. It ached, she bitterly reflected, from being looked at, from knowing they were taking observations for subsequent speculation. She had been in charge of a table at the bazaar; a number of little things had gone wrong and she got out of patience with one of her assistants. Other people got irritated upon occasions of that sort—and that was all there was to it. But she was not at liberty to show annoyance. She knew at the time that they were whispering around about it, connecting it with the thing about her that it seemed never really went out of their minds. The sense of that had made her really angry and she had said sharp things she knew she would be sorry for because they would just be turned over as part of the thing that was everlastingly being turned over. She was not free; they were always watching her; even after all these years always thinking that everything had something to do withthat.
Mrs. Hughes, her housekeeper and cook, had followed her upstairs. At the door of her room she turned impatiently. She had known by the way the woman hung around downstairs that she wanted to say something to her and she had petulantly not given her the chance. She did not want anything said to her. She wanted to be let alone.
"Well?" she inquired ungraciously.
Mrs. Hughes was a small trim woman who had a look of modestly trying not to be obtrusive about her many virtues. She had now that manner of one who could be depended upon to assume responsibilities a less worthy person would pass by.
"I thought perhaps you should know, Mrs. Williams," she said with faintly rebuking patience, "that Lily has gone to bed."
"Oh, she's really sick then, is she?" asked Mrs. Williams, unbending a little.
"She says so," replied Mrs. Hughes.
The tone caused her to look at the woman in surprise. "Well, I presume she is then," she answered sharply.
Lily was the second girl. Two servants were not needed for the actual work as the household consisted only of Mrs. Williams and an aged aunt who had lived with her since she had been alone, but the house itself did not seem adapted to a one servant menage. There had been two before, and in that, as in other things, she had gone right on in the same way. Mrs. Hughes had been with her for several years but Lily had been there only three or four months. She had been a strange addition to the household; she laughed a good deal and tripped about at her work and sang. But she had not sung so much of late and in the last few days had plainly not been well.
"If she's really sick, we'll have to have a doctor for her," Mrs. Williams said, her hand on the knob she was about to turn.
"She says she doesn't want a doctor," answered Mrs. Hughes, and again her tone made Mrs. Williams look at her in impatient inquiry.
"Well, I'll go up after while and see her myself," she said, opening the door of her room. "Meanwhile you look after her, please. And oh, Mrs. Hughes," she called back, "I shan't want any dinner. I had a heavy tea at the bazaar," she added hurriedly, and as if resentful of having to make any explanation.
Alone, she took off her hat, pushed back her hair as if it oppressed her, then sank into a low, luxurious chair and, eyes closed, pressed her fingers over her temples as if to command quiet within. But after a moment she impatiently got up and went over to her dressing-table and sat looking into the mirror.
The thing that had started her afternoon wrong was that a friend of her girlhood, whom she had not seen for about thirteen years, had appeared unexpectedly at her table, startling her and then laughing at her confusion. She had not known that Stella Cutting was in town; to be confronted that way with some one out of the past had been unnerving, and then she had been furious with herself for not being able more easily to regain composure. People around her had seen; later she saw them looking at her strangely, covertly interested when she spoke in that sharp way to Mildred Woodbury because she had tossed things about. She had been disturbed, for one thing, at finding Mildred Woodbury at her table.
She was looking in the glass now because Stella Cutting had been one of her bridesmaids. She was not able to put down a miserable desire to try to see just what changes Stella had found.
The dissatisfaction in her face deepened with her scrutiny of it. Doubtless Stella was that very minute talking of how pitifully Marion Averley had changed; how her color used to be clear and even, features firmly molded, eyes bright. She herself remembered how she had looked the night Stella Cutting was her bridesmaid. And now her color was muddy and there were crow's feet about her eyes and deep lines from her nostrils to the corners of her mouth.
Stella Cutting looked older herself, very considerably older. But it was a different way of looking older. She had grown stout and her face was too full. But she did not lookpulledat like this. As she talked of her children hers was the face of a woman normally, contentedly growing older. The woman sitting before the mirror bitterly turned away now from that reflection of dissatisfaction with emptiness.
It was that boy had done it! she thought with a new rise of resentment. She had been able to go along very evenly until he impertinently came into her house and rudely and stupidly broke through the things she had carefully builded up around herself. Ever since he had plunged into things even she herself had been careful not to break into, there had been this inner turmoil that was giving her the look of an old woman. If Stella Cutting had come just a few months earlier she could not have had so much to say about how terribly Marion Averley had changed.
Why was she so absurd as to let herself be upset? she angrily asked of herself, beginning to unfasten the dress she was wearing that she might get into something loose and try to relax. A hook caught in some lace and in her vexation at not being able at once to unfasten it she gave it a jerk that tore the lace. She bit her lips and could have cried. Those were the things she did these days!—since that boy came and blunderingly broke into guarded places.
She sat in a low, deep chair before the open fire that burned in the sitting-room adjoining her bedroom. It was the room that had been her husband's. After he went away she took it for an upstairs sitting-room—a part of her program of unconcern. As she sank down into the gracious chair she told herself that she would rest for that evening, not think about things. But not to think about things was impossible that night. Stella Cutting had brought old things near and made them newly real: her girlhood, her falling in love with Stuart Williams, her wedding. Those reminiscences caught her and swept her on to other things. She thought of her marriage; thought of things that, ever since that boy came and made her know how insecure she really was in the defences she had put up for herself, it had been a struggle to keep away from.
She had not done much thinking—probing—as to why it was her marriage had failed. That was another one of the things her pride shut her out from. When it failed she turned from it, clothed in pride, never naked before the truth. There was something relaxing in just letting down the barriers, barriers which had recently been so shaken that she was fretted with trying to hold them up.
She wondered why Stella Cutting's marriage had succeeded and hers had failed. The old answer that her marriage had failed because her husband was unfaithful to her—answer that used always to leave her newly fortified, did not satisfy tonight. She pushed on through that. There was a curious emotional satisfaction in thus disobeying herself by rushing into the denied places of self-examination. She was stirred by what she was doing.
Her long holding back from this very thing was part of that same instinct for restraint, what she had been pleased to think of as fastidiousness, that had always held her back in love. It was alien to her to let herself go; she had an instinct that held her away from certain things—from the things themselves and from free thinking about them. What she was doing now charged her with excitement.
She was wondering about herself and the man who was still legally her husband. She was thinking of how different they were in the things of love; how he gave and wanted giving, while her instinct had always been to hold herself a little apart. There was something that displeased her in abandonment to feeling. She did not like herself when she fully gave. There had been something in her, some holding back, that passionate love outraged. Intense demonstration was indelicate to her; she was that way, she had not been able to help it. She loved in what she thought of as her own fastidious way. Passion violated something in her. Falling in love had made her happy, but with her love had never been able to sweep down the reserves, and so things which love should have made beautiful had remained for her ugly facts of life that she had an instinct to hold herself away from. What she felt she did not like herself for feeling. And so their marriage had been less union than man[oe]uvering.
She supposed she had, to be very blunt, starved Stuart's love. For he wanted much love, a full and intense love life. He was passionate and demonstrative. He gave and wanted, perhaps needed, much giving. He did not understand that constant holding back. For him the beauty of love was in the expression of it. She supposed, in this curious self-indulgence of facing things tonight, that it had been he who was normal; she had memories of many times when she had puzzled and disappointed and hurt him.
And so when Gertrude Freemont—an old school friend of hers, a warm-natured Southern girl—came to visit her, Stuart turned away from things grudging and often chill to Gertrude's playfulness and sunniness and warmth. There was a curious shock to her tonight when she found herself actually thinking that perhaps it was not much to be wondered at. He was like that. She had not made him over to be like her.
At first he had found Gertrude enlivening, and from a flirtation it went to one of those passages of passion between a man and a woman, a thing that flames up and then dies away, in a measure a matter of circumstance. That was the way he tried to explain it to her when, just as Gertrude was leaving, she came to know—even in this present abandonment to thinking she went hurriedly past the shock of that terrible sordid night of "finding out." Stuart had weakly and appealingly said that he hadn't been able to help it, that he was sorry—that it was all over.
But with it their marriage was all over. She told him so then—told him quite calmly, it would seem serenely; went on telling him so through those first days of his unhappiness and persistence. She was always quite unperturbed in telling him so. Politely, almost pleasantly, she would tell him that she would never be his wife again.
She never was. She had known very certainly from the first that she never would be. Tonight she probed into that too—why she had been so sure, why she had never wavered. It was a more inner thing than just jealousy, resentment, hurt, revenge—though all those things were there too. But those were things that might have broken down, and this was not a thing that would break down. It was more particularly temperamental than any of those things. It was that thing in her which had always held her back from giving. Shehadgiven—and then her giving had been outraged! Even now she burned in the thought of that. He had called out a thing in her that she had all along—just because she was as she was—resented having had called out. And then he had flouted it. Even after all those years there was tonight that old prickling of her scalp in thinking of it. The things she might have said—of its being her own friend, in her own house—she did not much dwell upon, even to herself. It was a more inner injury than that. Something in her that was curiously against her had been called to life by him—and then he had outraged what she had all along resented his finding in her. To give at all had been so tremendous a thing—then to have it lightly held! It outraged something that was simply outside the sphere of things forgivable.
And that outraged thing had its own satisfaction. What he had called to life in her and then, as it seemed, left there unwanted, what he had made in her that was not herself—then left her with, became something else, something that made her life. From the first until now—or at any rate until two months ago when that boy came and forced her to look at herself—the thing in her that had been outraged became something that took the place of love, that was as the other pole of love, something that yielded a satisfaction of its own, a satisfaction intense as the things of love are intense, but cold, ordered, certain. It was the power to hurt; the power to bring pain by simply doing nothing. It was not tempestuously done; it had none of the uncertainty of passionate feeling; it had the satisfaction of power without effort, of disturbing and remaining undisturbed, of hurting and giving no sign. It was the revenge of what was deeply herself for calling her out from herself, for not wanting what was found in her that was not herself.
Stuart wanted her again; terribly wanted her, more than ever wanted her. He loved and so could be hurt. He needed love and so could be given pain. He thought she would give in; she knew that she would not. There was power in that knowledge. And so she watched him suffer and herself gained new poise. She did not consider how it was a sorry thing to fill her life with. When, that night that was like being struck by lightning, she came to know that the man to whom she had given—she—had turned from her to another woman it was as if she was then and there sealed in. She would never let herself leave again. Outraged pride blocked every path out from self. She was shut in with her power to inflict pain. That was all she had. And then that boy came and made her look at herself and know that she was poor! That was why Stella Cutting could be talking of how Marion Averley had "broken."
They were talking about it, of course; about her and Ruth Holland and her husband.Herhusband, she thought insistently, but without getting the accustomed satisfaction from the thought. Miserably she wondered just what they were saying; she flinched in the thought of their talk about her hurt, her loneliness. And then she felt a little as if she could cry. She had wondered if she had anybody's real pity.
That thought of their talking of it opened it to her, drew her to it. She thought of Ruth Holland, gave up the worn pretense of disinterest and let herself go in thinking of her.
The first feeling she had had when she suspected that her husband was drawn to that girl, Ruth Holland, was one of chagrin, a further hurt to pride. For her power to give pain would be cut off. Once she saw the girl's face light as Stuart went up to her for a dance. She knew then that the man who had that girl's love could not be hurt in the way she had been hurting. At first she was not so much jealous as strangely desolated. And then as time went on and in those little ways that can make things known to those made acute through unhappiness she came to know that her husband cared for this girl and had her love, anger at having been again stripped, again left there outraged, made her seize upon the only power left, that more sordid, more commonplace kind of power. She could no longer hurt by withholding herself; she could only hurt by standing in the way. Rage at the humiliation of being reduced to that fastened her to it with a hold not to be let go. All else was taken from her and she was left with just that. Somehow she reduced herself to it; she became of the quality of it.
Pride, or rather self-valuation, incapacity for self-depreciation, had never let her be honest with herself. As there were barriers shutting the world out from her hurt and humiliation, so too were there barriers shutting herself out. She did not acknowledge pain, loneliness, for that meant admission that she could not have what she would have. She thought of it as withdrawal, dignified withdrawal from one not fit. She had always tried to feel that her only humiliation was in having given to one not worth her—one lesser.
But in this reckless and curiously exciting mood of honesty tonight she got some idea of how great the real hurt had been. She knew now that when she came to know—to feel in a way that was knowing—that her husband loved Ruth Holland she suffered something much more than hurt to pride. It was pride that would not let her look at herself and see how she was hurt. And pride would not let her say one word, make one effort. It was simply not in her to bring herself totryto have love given her. And so she was left with the sordid satisfaction of the hurt she dealt in just being. That became her reason for existence—the ugly reason for her barren existence. She lived alone with it for so long that she came to be of it. Her spirit seemed empty of all else. It had kept her from everything; it had kept her from herself.
But now tonight she could strangely get to herself, and now she knew that far from Ruth Holland not mattering her whole being had from the first been steeped in hatred of her. Her jealousy had been of a freezing quality; it had even frozen her power to know about herself. When, after one little thing and then another had let her know there was love between her husband and this girl, to go to places where Ruth Holland was would make her numb—that was the way it was with her. Once in going somewhere—a part of that hideous doing things together which she kept up because it was one way of showing she was there, would continue to be there—she and Stuart drove past the Hollands', and this girl was out in the yard, romping with her dog, tusseling with him like a little girl. She looked up, flushed, tumbled, panting, saw them, tried to straighten her hair, laughed in confusion and retreated. Stuart had raised his hat to her, trying to look nothing more than discreetly amused. But a little later after she—his wife—had been looking from the other window as if not at all concerned she turned her head and saw his face in the mirror on the opposite side of the carriage. He had forgotten her; she was taking him unawares. Up to that time she had not been sure—at least not sure of its meaning much. But when she saw that tender little smile playing about his mouth she knew it was true that her power to hurt him had reduced itself to being in his way. That she should be reduced to that made her feeling about it as ugly as the thing itself.
She did not sleep that night—after seeing Ruth Holland romping with her dog. She had cried—and was furious that she should cry, that it could make her cry. And furious at herself because of the feeling she had—a strange stir of passion, a wave of that feeling which had seemed to her unlovely even when it was desired and that it was unbearably humiliating to feel unwanted. It was in this girl he wanted those things now; that girl who could let herself go, whom life rioted in, who doubtless could abandon herself to love as she could in romping with her dog. It tortured her to think of the girl's flushed, glowing face—panting there, hair tumbled. She cringed in the thought of how perhaps what she had given was measured by what this girl could give.
As time went on she knew that her husband was more happy than he had ever been before—and increasingly unhappy. Her torture in the thought of his happiness made her wrest the last drop of satisfaction she could from the knowledge that she could continue the unhappiness. Sometimes he would come home and she would know he had been with this girl, know it as if he had shouted it at her—it fairly breathed from him. To feel that happiness near would have maddened her had she not been able to feel that her very being there dealt unhappiness. It was a wretched thing to live with. Beauty had not come into her life; it would not come where that was.
And then she came to know that they were being cornered. She—knowing—saw misery as well as love in the girl's eyes—a hunted look. Her husband grew terribly nervous, irritable, like one trapped. It was hurting his business; it was breaking down his health. Not until afterward did she know that there was also a disease breaking down his health. She did not know what difference it might have made had she known that. By that time she had sunk pretty deep into lust for hurting, into hating.
She saw that this love was going to wreck his life. His happiness was going to break him. If the world came to know it would be known that her husband did not want her, that he wanted someone else. She smarted under that—and so fortified herself the stronger in an appearance of unconcern. She could better bear exposure of his uncaringness for her than let him suspect that he could hurt her. And they would be hurt! If it became known it would wreck life for them both. The town would know then about Ruth Holland—that wanton who looked so spiritual! They would know then what the girl they had made so much of really was! She would not any longer have to listen to that talk of Ruth Holland as so sweet, so fine!
And so she waited; sure that it would come, would come without her having given any sign, without her having been moved from her refuge of unconcern—she who had given and not been wanted! That week before Edith Lawrence's wedding she knew that it was coming, that something was happening. Stuart looked like a creature driven into a corner. And he looked sick; he seemed to have lost hold on himself. Once as she was passing the door of his room it blew a little open and she saw him sitting on the bed, face buried in his hands. After she passed the door she halted—but went on. She heard him moving around in the night; once she heard him groan. Instinctively she had sat up in bed, but had lain down again—remembering, remembering that he was groaning because he did not want her, because she was in the way of the woman he wanted.
She saw in those days, that week before Edith Lawrence's wedding, that he was trying to say something to her and could not, that he was wretched in his fruitless attempts to say it. He would come where she was, sit there white, miserable, dogged, then go away after having said only some trivial thing. Once—she was always quite cool, unperturbed, through those attempts of his—he had passionately cried out, "You're pretty superior, aren't you, Marion? Pretty damned serene!" It was a cry of desperation, a cry from unbearable pain, but she gave no sign. Like steel round her heart was that feeling that he was paying now.
After that outburst he did not try to talk to her; that was the last night he was at home. He came home at noon next day and said he was going away on a business trip. She heard him packing in his room. She knew—felt sure—that it was something more than a business trip. She felt sure that he was leaving. And then she wanted to go to him and say something, whether reproaches or entreaties she did not know; listened to him moving around in there, wanted to go and say something and could not; could only sit there listening, hearing every smallest sound. She heard him speak a surly word to a servant in the hall. He never spoke that way to the servants. When he shut the front door she knew that he would not open it again. She got to the window and saw him before he passed from sight—carrying his bag, head bent, stooped. He was broken, and he was going away. She knew it.
Even tonight she could not let herself think much about that afternoon, the portentous emptiness, the strangeness of the house; going into his room to see what he had taken, in there being tied up as with panic, sinking down on his bed and unable to move for a long time.
She had forced herself to go to Edith Lawrence's wedding. And she knew by Ruth Holland's face that it was true something was happening, knew it by the girl's face as she walked down the aisle after attending her friend at the altar, knew it by her much laughter, by what was not in the laughter. Once during the evening she saw Edith put her arm around Ruth Holland and at the girl's face then she knew with certainty, did not need the letter that came from Stuart next day. She had the picture of Ruth Holland now as she was that last night, in that filmy dress of pale yellow that made her look so delicate. She was helped through that evening by the thought that if she was going to be publicly humiliated Ruth Holland would be publicly disgraced. She would have heard the last about that fine, delicate quality—about sweetness and luminousness! They would know, finally, that she was not those things she looked.
And after it happened the fact that they did know it helped her to go on. She went right on, almost as if nothing had happened. She would not let herself go away because then they would say she went away because she could not bear it, because she did not want them to see. She must stay and show them that there was nothing to see. Forcing herself to do that so occupied her as to help her with things within. She could not let herself feel for feeling would show on the surface. Even before herself she had kept up that manner of unconcern and had come to be influenced by her own front.
And so the years went by and her life had been made by that going on in apparent unconcern, and by that inner feeling that she was hurting them by just being in life. It was not a lovely reason for being in life; she had not known what a poor thing it was until that boy came and forced her to look at herself and consider how little she had.
She rose and stood looking into the mirror above the fireplace. It seemed to her that she could tell by her face that the desire to do harm had been her reason for living.
Several hours had gone by while she sat there given over to old things. She wished she had a book, something absorbing, something to take her away from that other thinking that was lying in wait for her—those thoughts about what there was for her to live with in the years still to be lived. The magazine she had picked up could not get any hold on her; that was why, though she had made it clear she did not want to be disturbed, there was relief in her voice as she answered the tap at her door.
She frowned a little though at sight of Mrs. Hughes standing there deferential but visibly excited. She had that look of trying not to intrude her worthiness as she said: "Excuse me, Mrs. Williams, for disturbing you, but there is something I thought you ought to know." In answer to the not very cordial look of inquiry she went on, "It's about Lily; she says she won't have a doctor, but—she needs one."
There was something in her manner, something excited and yet grim, that Mrs. Williams did not understand. But then she did not much trouble herself to understand Mrs. Hughes, she was always appearing to see some hidden significance in things. "I'll go up and see her," she said.
After the visit she came down to telephone for her doctor. She saw that the girl was really ill, and she had concluded from her strange manner that she was feverish. Lily protested that she wanted to be let alone, that she would be all right in a day or two; but she looked too ill for those protestations to be respected.
She telephoned for her own doctor only to learn that he was out of town. Upon calling another physician's house she was told that he had the grip and could not go out. She then sat for some minutes in front of the 'phone before she looked up a number in the book and called Dr. Deane Franklin. When she rose after doing that she felt as if her knees were likely to give way. The thought of his coming into her house, coming just when she had been living through old things, was unnerving. But she was really worried about the girl and knew no one else to call whom she could trust.
When he came she was grateful to him for his professional manner which seemed to take no account of personal things, to have no personal memory. "I'd like to see you when you come down, doctor," she said as Mrs. Hughes was taking him to the maid's room on the third floor.
She was waiting for him at the door of her upstairs sitting-room. He stepped in and then stood hesitatingly there. He too had a queer grim look, she thought.
"And what is the trouble?" she asked.
He gave her a strange sideways glance and snapped shut a pocket of the bag he carried. Then he said, brusquely: "It's a miscarriage."
She felt the blood surging into her face. She had stepped a little back from him. "Why—I don't see how that's possible," she faltered.
He smiled a little and she had a feeling that he took a satisfaction in saying to her, grimly, "Oh, it's possible, all right."
She colored anew. She resented his manner and that made her collect herself and ask with dignity what was the best thing to do.
"I presume we'd better take her to the hospital," he said in that short way. "She's been—horribly treated. She's going to need attention—and doubtless it would be disagreeable to have her here."
That too she suspected him of finding a satisfaction in saying. She made a curt inquiry as to whether the girl would be all right there for the night. He said yes and left saying he would be back in the morning.
She escaped Mrs. Hughes—whom now she understood. She did not go up again to see Lily; she could not do that then. She was angry with herself for being unnerved. She told herself that at any other time she would have been able to deal sensibly with such a situation. But coming just when things were all opened up like that—old feeling fresh—and coming from Deane Franklin! She would be quite impersonal, rational, in the morning. But for a long time she could not go to sleep. Something had intruded into her guarded places. And the things of life from which she had withdrawn were here—in her house. It affected her physically, almost made her sick—this proximity of the things she had shut out of her life. It was invasion.
And she thought about Lily. She tried not to, but could not help wondering about her. She wondered how this had happened—what the girl was feeling. Was there someone she loved? She lay there thinking of how, just recently, this girl who lived in her house had been going through those things. It made her know that the things of life were all the time around one. There was something singularly disturbing in the thought.
Next morning she went up to see Lily. She told herself it was only common decency to do that, her responsibility to a person in her house.
As she opened the door Lily turned her head and looked at her. When she saw who it was her eyes went sullen, defiant. But pain was in them too, and with all the rest something wistful. As she looked at the girl lying there—in trouble, in pain, she could see Lily, just a little while before, laughing and singing at her work. Something she had not felt in years, that she had felt but little in her whole life, stirred in her heart.
"Well, Lily," she said, uncertainly but not unkindly.
The girl's eyes were down, her face turned a little away. But she could see that her chin was quivering.
"I'm sorry you are ill," Mrs. Williams murmured, and then gave a little start at the sound of her own voice.
The girl turned her head and stole a look. A moment later there were tears on her lashes.
"We'll have to get you well," said Mrs. Williams in a practical, cheerful voice. And then she abruptly left the room. Her heart was beating too fast.
Mrs. Hughes lay in wait for her as she came downstairs. "May I speak to you, Mrs. Williams?" she asked in a manner at once deferential and firm.
"She's to be taken away, isn't she?" she inquired in a hard voice.
For a moment Mrs. Williams did not speak. She looked at the woman before her, all tightened up with outraged virtue. And then she heard herself saying: "No, I think it will be better for Lily to remain at home." After she had heard herself say it she had that feeling that her knees were about to give way.
For an instant Mrs. Hughes' lips shut tight. Then, "Do you know what's the matter with her?" she demanded in that sharp, hard voice.
"Yes," replied Mrs. Williams, "I know."
"And you're going to keep such a person in your house?"
"Yes."
"Then you can't expectmeto stay in your house!" flashed the woman who was outraged.
"As you like, Mrs. Hughes," was the answer.
Mrs. Hughes moved a little away, plainly discomfited.
"I should be sorry to have you go," Mrs. Williams continued courteously, "but of course that is for you to decide."
"I'm a respectable woman," she muttered. "You can't expectmeto wait on a person like that!"
"You needn't wait on her, then," was the reply. "Until the nurse comes, I will wait on her myself." And again she turned abruptly away.
Once more her heart was beating too fast.
When the doctor came and began about the arrangement he had been able to make at the hospital, she quietly told him that, if it would be as well, she would rather keep Lily at home. His startled look made her flush. His manner with her was less brusque as he said good-by. She smiled a little over that last puzzled glance he stole at her.
Then she went back to Lily's room. She straightened her bed for her, telling her that in a little while the nurse would be there to make her really comfortable. She bathed the girl's hot face and hands. She got her a cold drink. As she put her hand behind her head to raise her a little for that, the girl murmured brokenly: "You're so kind!"
She went out and sat in an adjoining room, to be within call. And as she sat there a feeling of strange peace stole through her. It was as if she had been set free, as if something that had chained her for years had fallen away. When in her talk with Mrs. Hughes she became that other woman, the woman on the other side, on compassion's side, something just fell from her. When that poor girl murmured, "You're so kind!" she suddenly knew that she must have something more from life than that satisfaction of harming those who had hurt her. When she washed the girl's face she knew what she could not unknow. She had served. She could not find the old satisfaction in working harm. The soft, warm thing that filled her heart with that cry, "You're so kind!" had killed forever the old cruel satisfaction in being in the way.
She felt very quiet in this wonderful new liberation. She began shaping life as something more than a standing in the way of others. It made life seem a different thing just to think of it as something other than that. And suddenly she knew that she did not hate Ruth Holland any more; that she did not even hate the man who had been her husband. Hating had worn itself out; it fell from her, a thing outlived. It was wonderful to have it gone. For a long time she sat there very quiet in the wonder of that peace of knowing that she was free—freed of the long hideous servitude of hating, freed of wanting to harm. It made life new and sweet. She wanted something from life. She must have more of that gentle sweetness that warmed her heart when Lily murmured, "You're so kind!"