Still with her hidden face, Felicia sat silent, thinking of Maurice, of Geoffrey, only vaguely hearing Angela’s words.
“And then how human;—after all I am human. See how intolerable it was to me, your scorn of me, your rejection of me when I meant only good, when I knew that he had loved me most; when I knew how infinitely I loved him.” It comforted her to feel the tears running down her cheeks and, in her poor, stricken humanity, to seem noble to herself in her avowed abasement. “Perhaps I have been jealous—oh, how can I tell? Perhaps I made too high and impossible an ideal for myself and thought that I could conquer that yearning to be loved. Can’t you pity me? Can’t you see what I have suffered in seeing him with you?”
Felicia, looking on the ground, mechanically pushed back the hair from her forehead. The picture indeed was in a piteous attitude; she knew it, although she could feel nothing.
“Yes, I am sorry for you. It has been horrible for you,” she said, but with the weariness that a soldier, lying shattered, helpless, upon a battlefield, might show towards the tormenting clamours and lamentations of a wounded enemy beside him. She wished to be allowed to bleed quietly to death. These alien hands plucked at her for a help, a sympathy she could not give. She was sorry; but when one was shattered one could only know that one was sorry and be tired.
Angela’s weeping was stilled for a moment. After all, it was not pity that she wanted. She wanted to be lifted from the nightmare of abasement; to feel herself looking down once more; to be the consoler, the binder of wounds—not the suppliant; not the recipient of an indifferent dole. She approached Felicia, putting out her hand to her.
“And you know—dear—dear—child, how I pity you. Ah, let this pity, this mutual agony unite us, Felicia—you who have lost only an illusion, I who have lost a reality. Can we not see each other more clearly now? Can we not understand—and kiss each other—like sisters?”
Maeterlinckian visions—a tower, a sad blue sea, a great blue sky, white birds, wandering, beautiful souls in pain—crossed her mind, enhancing her consciousness of beauty. It was beautiful, what she said, and she must look beautiful, leaning in whiteness, with her outstretched hand, the tears of her deeper sorrow upon her face, towards this fallen comrade. This would atone for all, be the spiritual significance of all the tragic drama, this union of suffering sisters. She drooped softly upon the figure in the chair, encircling it.
But with a violence that made Angela reel back, almost losing her footing, Felicia started to her feet. Staring, white, shuddering, she looked at the other woman.
“Don’t touch me. You must not touch me.—Go away—you are horrible,” she said. “You fill me with horror.” Her voice was hoarse, shaking.
Angela had retreated from her, and while they looked at each other across the room, a strange struggle and change showed itself in her face. Felicia’s conviction entered her. She felt herself evil. She felt herself horrible.