With all the force of her crucified trust and tenderness, all the passion of her shattered pride, she hated him.
Raising her eyes she saw Angela standing and looking at her. Angela was distant, unreal, a picture hung before dying eyes. She felt no hatred for Angela; instead, with the terrible clearness of her new vision, she felt a far-away and contemptuous pity. She saw both herself and Angela caught in the same net of falsity; both she and Angela in their struggles were piteous. Angela had been ugly in her struggle, but she could not feel that she hated her.
She turned her head away, looking vaguely around her at the room that had become unfamiliar, ominous. A chair was near her, one she and Maurice had bought together. She sank upon it thinking dimly—“This was home.”
“You see—I did not lie to you,” said Angela. That Felicia should show no anger, should not writhe and curse beneath the foot upon her neck, made her wonder—in another of those crumbling flashes—whether indeed her foot was upon Felicia’s neck. She had struck her down, she had humbled her, but was she not now to be allowed to forgive, to staunch the wounds with magnanimity and sorrow? Was it possible that the horrid image of her was the true one? Was it possible that Felicia too, was seeing her in the mire?
She repeated: “You see I did not lie to you.”
“No,” said Felicia, folding her husband’s letter as she spoke, “you didn’t lie.”
Her very voice had the charred, the wasted quality; life had been burned out of it.
“And can you not believe now that I never hated you?” said Angela.
Felicia leaned her head on her hand, closing her eyes. “I don’t care. It makes no difference to me.”
Angela felt herself shut out, infinitely remote from the other’s consciousness. Tears rose in her eyes, almost a sob in her throat. “How cruel you are. What have I done to deserve such cruelty? I have only tried to help you.”