"Annie! Annie!" It was repeated in a querulous quaver from the sick room and Anne went to her father.
"That was Roger, wasn't it? Are you going back home, Annie?" He looked up from the burrow of the bed-clothes, so disturbed that Anne laid her hand upon his shoulder to reassure him.
"No. I'm not going. Roger has to go to Chicago and he ran up to say good-by."
"That's nice. That's nice, Annie." He patted her hand, his eyes were already filming with sleep. In a moment he was breathing evenly again.
He had wakened from his sleep to clutch at her, to hold her to his need, no matter what her own. True to his own selfishness until the end; his claims always hidden under a false consideration, just as his pleased "that's nice, that's nice," covered, in its implication of affection for her, the hook with which he would draw her to him, hold her between the fussy efforts of Hilda and his own exhausted nerves.
Anne went quietly from the room, closing the door except for the narrow crack left open always for his call. In her own room, Rogie was asleep. If she lit the light he might wake. She could not lie in the dark thinking. She would have liked to go and walk far in the night, but Hilda would ask questions. There was no spot in the universe hers, hers alone, free from some binding chain, some duty to some one.
In the kitchen, Charlotte Welles was talking while Hilda listened, her blue eyes wide in a fascinated interest. As Anne came just inside the door, Charlotte's eyes included her in what she had been saying and Anne's bitterness changed slowly to anger.
"She has lost everything," Charlotte Welles was saying, "husband, child, wealth. But she has found peace. Now she knows. She says she was never really happy before."
"It's wonderful. It does seem as if there must be something in it." Hilda's head wabbled as if over-weighted by the marvel imposed upon her intelligence.
"Why didn't she give away her money," Anne demanded fiercely, "and leave her husband and kill her children—whoever she may be—years ago, if that's all she needed for her happiness?"