"You know that's rather unfair," Henry muttered.
"'Unfair,' is it? 'Unfair'? A nice word for you to use. So I know it's unfair, do I? I'm being 'unfair,' am I?" She looked straight at him. Her eyes blazed at him, and she added solemnly: "Henry, you ought to be ashamed of yourself, the way you go on. What do you think Elsie thinks? The marvel is that she stays here. Supposing she left us and started to talk! You ought to be ashamed of yourself."
She dropped back into her chair and sobbed loudly. If Elsie heard her, what matter? In her rage she had put facts into words, and thereby given them life, devastating life. In two minutes she had transformed the domestic interior from heaven into hell. She had done something which could never be undone. Words had created that which no words could destroy. And he had driven her to it. She gazed at him once more, across the ruins of their primitive and austere bliss.
"You're shortening your life. That's what you're doing," she said, with chill ferocity. "Not to speak of mine. What's mine? What did you have for your dinner out to-day' You daren't tell me because you starved yourself. I defy you to tell me."
She laid her head on the table just like a schoolgirl abandoning herself utterly to some girlish grief, and went on crying, but not angrily and rebelliously now—mournfully, self-pityingly, tragically. And then she sat up straight again, with suddenness, and shot new fire from her wet eyes at the tyrannic monster.
"Yes, and you needn't think I've been spending money on servant's caps, either! Because I haven't. I know no more about that cap of Elsie's than you do. God alone knows where she's got it from, and why she's wearing it. But I give servants up." (Here Henry had an absurd wild glimmer of hope that she meant to give Elsie up, do without a servant, and so save wages and food. But he saw the next instant that he had misunderstood her words.) "They're past me, servants are! Only, of course, you think it's me been buying caps for the girl!"
This was the last flaring of her furious resentment. Instead of replying to it, Henry softly left the room. Violet's sobs died down, and her compassion for herself grew silent, since there was no longer need for its expression. She tried hard to concentrate on the hardships of her lot, but she could not. Another idea insisted on occupying her mind, and compared to this idea the hardships of her lot were trifles.
"I've lost my power over him."
If he had only responded to her cajolings, and recognized in some formal way her power! If he had only caressed her and pleaded with her not to exercise her power too drastically upon him. If he had only said: "Vi, let me off. I'll eat just a little bit to please you, but I really can't eat it all. You know you can do what you like with me, but let me off!" That would have been marvellous, delicious, entirely satisfactory. But she had lost her power. And yet, while mourning that she had lost her power, she knew very well that she had never had any power. He was in love with her, but he was more in love with his grand passion and vice, which alone had power over him, and of which he, the bland tyrant over all else, was the slave. She had pretended to herself that she had power, and she had been able to maintain the pretence because she had never till that day attempted to put her imagined power really to the test. Twice now she had essayed it, and twice failed. Fool! She was a fool! She had irreparably damaged her prestige. She had but one refuge, the refuge of yielding. "I must yield! I must yield!" she thought passionately. And the voluptuous pleasure of yielding presented itself to her temptingly.... She must submit. She must cling still closer to him, echo faithfully his individuality, lose herself in him. There was nothing else.
Elsie entered to clear the table. Violet jumped up, seized the discarded mantle, and put it on. She was not young enough—that is to say, her body was not young enough—to scorn the inclement evening cold of the room. Averting her face from the cap-wearer, she departed. But at the door another idea occurred to her.