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Fidelity

<h2>CHAPTER THIRTY</h2> 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 with that. 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 look pulled at 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. She had given—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. Her husband, 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 to try to 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 expect me to 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 expect me to 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!" <hr style="width: 65%;" /> <div style="break-after:column;"></div>

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