She stuffed her
handkerchief between her teeth and lips; she did it unconsciously. Her
eyes felt scorched from the fire-flames, but she did not trouble to hold
her hand before them.
Suddenly she thought: 'Suppose I HAD loved him?' and laughed. The
handkerchief dropped to her lap, and she looked at it with wonder--it
was blood-stained. She drew back in the chair, away from the scorching
of the fire, and sat quite still, a smile on her lips. That girl's eyes,
like a little adoring dog's--that girl, who had fawned on her so! She
had got her "distinguished man"! She sprang up and looked at herself in
the glass; shuddered, turned her back on herself, and sat down again. In
her own house! Why not here--in this room? Why not before her eyes? Not
yet a year married! It was almost funny--almost funny! And she had her
first calm thought: 'I am free.'
But it did not seem to mean anything, had no value to a spirit so
bitterly stricken in its pride. She moved her chair closer to the fire
again. Why had she not tapped on the window? To have seen that girl's
face ashy with fright! To have seen him--caught--caught in the room she
had made beautiful for him, the room where she had played for him so
many hours, the room that was part of the house that she paid for! How
long had they used it for their meetings--sneaking in by that door from
the back lane? Perhaps even before she went away--to bear his child! And
there began in her a struggle between mother instinct and her sense
of outrage--a spiritual tug-of-war so deep that it was dumb,
unconscious--to decide whether her baby would be all hers, or would have
slipped away from her heart, and be a thing almost abhorrent.
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