For long she remained kneeling, her face hidden, her hair dark over her hands. She knew what she would do: she would take Ordith. She might be afraid at first, but soon he would win her, soothe her. Of course she would take him; that had been planned, preordained.
She was almost asleep. Her weight pressed the edge of the bed.... Ordith would teach her, hold her. She would give herself——“God, why am I so hedged round—forsaking what is lovely, though I see its loveliness—like all the young, because I must. Jesus, pull me out of this even now—so late—even now.”
Her lashes moved against her palms. The light came through the pink edges of her fingers.... Was that only hypocrisy? Was she willing, after all? A tremor of excitement ran over her, and she pressed her elbows into the bed and shut her eyes again.... Anyhow, in fifty years it wouldn’t matter.... And Christ would not come again. It was foolish to—to starve for a dream.
The room was cold. Her shoulders were bare, and her feet. This physical consciousness was like the touch of a hand.
III
Throughout the morning Margaret looked forward to her encounter with Ordith with that mixture of passivity and restlessness which alternately lulls and excites the sensitive boy who, something of a hero among his schoolmates, awaits his flogging. After breakfast Ordith and her father disappeared; after lunch they disappeared again. She and her mother, possessed by a common thought which neither would express, faced each other in a silence that was half-nervous, half-determined.
Early in the afternoon her mother complained of a headache, and went to her room.
“You might have my tea brought up to me, Margaret.”
“Poor mother!” Margaret thought. “She’s hoping that I am going to be sensible. Ought I to tell her I am going to be sensible—just to set her mind at rest?”