§11
After Lady Harman’s maid had left her that night, she sat for some time in a low easy chair before her fire, trying at first to collect together into one situation all the events of the day and then lapsing into that state of mind which is not so much thinking as resting in the attitude of thought. Presently, in a vaguely conceived future, she would go to bed. She was stunned by the immense dimensions of the row her simple act of defiance had evoked.
And then came an incredible incident, so incredible that next day she still had great difficulty in deciding whether it was an actuality or a dream. She heard a little very familiar sound. It was the last sound she would have expected to hear and she turned sharply when she heard it. The paper-covered door in the wall of her husband’s apartment opened softly, paused, opened some more and his little undignified head appeared. His hair was already tumbled from his pillow.
He regarded her steadfastly for some moments with an expression between shame and curiosity and smouldering rage, and then allowed his body, clad now in purple-striped pyjamas, to follow his head into her room. He advanced guiltily.
“Elly,” he whispered. “Elly!”
She caught her dressing-gown about her and stood up.
“What is it, Isaac?” she asked, feeling curiously abashed at this invasion.
“Elly,” he said, still in that furtive undertone. “Make it up!”
“I want my freedom,” she said, after a little pause.
“Don’t be silly, Elly,” he whispered in a tone of remonstrance and advancing slowly towards her. “Make it up. Chuck all these ideas.”
She shook her head.
“We’ve got to get along together. You can’t go going about just anywhere. We’ve got—we’ve got to be reasonable.”
He halted, three paces away from her. His eyes weren’t sorrowful eyes, or friendly eyes; they were just shiftily eager eyes. “Look here,” he said. “It’s all nonsense.... Elly, old girl; let’s—let’s make it up.”
She looked at him and it dawned upon her that she had always imagined herself to be afraid of him and that indeed she wasn’t. She shook her head obstinately.
“It isn’t reasonable,” he said. “Here, we’ve been the happiest of people——Anything in reason I’ll let you have.” He paused with an effect of making an offer.
“I want my autonomy,” she said.
“Autonomy!” he echoed. “Autonomy! What’s autonomy? Autonomy!”
This strange word seemed first to hold him in distressful suspense and then to infuriate him.
“I come in here to make it up,” he said, with a voice charged with griefs, “after all you’ve done, and you go and you talk of autonomy!”
His feelings passed beyond words. An extremity of viciousness flashed into his face. He gave vent to a snarl of exasperation, “Ya-ap!” he said, he raised his clenched fists and seemed on the verge of assault, and then with a gesture between fury and despair, he wheeled about and the purple-striped pyjamas danced in passionate retreat from her room.
“Autonomy!...”
A slam, a noise of assaulted furniture, and then silence.
Lady Harman stood for some moments regarding the paper-covered door that had closed behind him. Then she bared her white forearm and pinched it—hard.
It wasn’t a dream! This thing had happened.