He looked his defiance into Mather's face. The tense and shaking figure of his rival towered above him, and Pease started forward to prevent a blow. But Mather controlled himself and pointed to the door. "Go!"
Ellis bowed to the sisters. "Good-night." No one made answer as he went away.
Beth, exhausted, was asleep at last; Judith sat by her side. The medical examiner had come and gone, her father lay in peace, and the house was quiet. Downstairs Mather was watching: he had offered to stay; Beth had begged that he might. Judith would not allow her thoughts to dwell on him, or on the comfort of his neighbourhood. She would not think of Ellis, nor of those obligations, the extent of which she did not understand. Of her father she did not dare to think except to promise to take his place toward Beth, and to pay his debt even if the struggle should bring her to face the world's worst. Yet no fear troubled her, for a new self, an awakening soul, was stirring within her, calling for contrition, self-examination, and for new resolves. Musing and confessing her faults, Judith went to the window and looked up at the stars; through them she looked into the unalterable and true. She had been wrong; she understood the falseness of her standards. Then she saw more, and awe began to come over her as she perceived so much where once had appeared so little. Life held love: her sister was left to her. Life held duty, and work to be accomplished. That work called her.
Yet how different it was from what she had expected! She had desired to mix with affairs; now in truth she would become part of them, but only as a wheel in the great machine. She was not disappointed nor dismayed. Seen thus near at hand, life had rewards, giving vigour, not ennui; and giving reality, not that artificiality of the past. She did not regret, for she saw greater heights to the new life which she faced than to the one dead level of the old conception.
It was also new to Judith that without reasoning she felt all this, and knew, as never before. She would give herself to this wonderful life, would follow it to whatever end was waiting for her, confident that, having acted right, that end could not be evil. And so feeling, her heart moved within her, again to her eyes came the tears, and another of those barriers melted away which stood between Judith and her true womanhood.
[CHAPTER XXIX]
Knowledge of New Things