With a quick motion Jean passed him, and without looking back walked out of the room. Philip heard her go quickly up the stairs and then the house was absolutely still. The rain dripped from the ailanthus, and a single light high up on the fifth floor of the tenement went out. Philip took his hat and went slowly, like an old person, from the house.
Staring down from her attic Jean saw him turn the corner and his bent head and sagging, unexercised body made her feel ill.
It was a long time after that when she heard Catherine pad away from her window to her bed.
CHAPTER FORTY-NINE
A little before dawn Jean got up. The narrowness of the couch, the heat of the sheets, the motionless air of a scorching day cramped her. She tried to hold her mind with unaccustomed attention to the details of dressing, but everything was different, the walls, the feel of the room, the furniture, even the toilet articles that she had had for years. They no longer formed part of an unnoticed background, but stood out as distinct points, drawing her attention. They thrust themselves into her consciousness, as familiar things do when seen again after a long absence or a serious illness. Between yesterday and to-day something had happened so that the person who was handling the comb and brush, moving the clothes from one chair to another, turning on the bath water, was different from the person who had done these things yesterday.
When Jean thought of Philip gripping her shoulders, disgust rushed over her in scorching waves that left her cold and quivering with anger. All night she had grown hot and cold at the memory. She had gotten up to escape it but now as she dressed she felt it stronger even than she had during the night. The thing was not a grotesque exaggeration of the darkness, but a reality persisting into the light. And as she put on her clothes she tried not to know that she was doing it hurriedly, covering from some need to her own peace, the white arms and neck.
She never wanted to speak to Philip again, nor see him, nor hear of him. The thought of Catherine creeping back to bed, her gray hair in two plaits down her back, sickened her. Catherine, stealing about catlike in the night, and Philip weak and angry in his baffled desire, and she, Jean, so far from desire and jealousy and need like this, all mixed up in this unclean situation. Jean felt that she would never be able wholly to free her shoulders from Philip's clutching fingers, or forget the things he had said. She would never again be exactly the same person who had opened the front door and found Philip on the landing, Philip, with his flat jokes, his heavy, flabby body, his grotesque caperings.
"For a few years you will be a woman yet."
Jean's face flamed. She wanted to go downstairs and out of the house and never come back. She did not want to see Catherine, and yet, if she went out at this extraordinary hour of the morning, the need of an explanation, or some reference to it, would bulk between her and Catherine when next they met. And for her own sake and Catherine's they must pretend. They would drag through breakfast together. Perhaps Catherine would even refer in some way to Philip, as if their coming in late at night had disturbed her. She would do it casually and well, better than Jean could meet it.
The sun touched the tips of the flagpoles on tall buildings, and another day crept out from night.... It was not true. None of it was true. And yet, the words sounded as clearly in her ears now as they had when Philip had hurled them at her. "You've got it in you, the call of a woman to a man."