During the next two years—which passed in labored slowness, she kept the matter to herself, though to her it was not merely a visit. It was a time from which she dated other times. It was the day upon which her dam had broken: the dam of her carefully reared fallacy. From that day on she could no longer fall back on the idea of a discredited Stuart in support of her efforts to exile him from her thoughts.
Thus disarmed, she asked herself, how was she to carry on the fight to find contentment; and to the question came two and only two answers. Children might fill the void of her existence or she might in time school herself into a tame acceptance by a sheer crushing of impulses.
In the responsibilities of motherhood there might be even now a fullness of compensation which would make of sacrifice an enthusiasm. The whole unsatisfied abundance of her nature could laugh at disappointment, striking out the past and living afresh in the lives of her children.
This was not a new thought and it held little hope. For two years she had prayed for its fulfillment and now her faith faltered.
So the one thing left seemed to be a vapid and colorless resignation.
Alone in her bedroom one night, which was typical of many nights, she pondered these matters. By her dresser mirror burned bayberry candles and in their faintly wavering illumination she caught an occasional glimpse of herself. She was not vain, but neither was she totally blind. She knew that God had given her a mind suitable for alert companionship. God had bestowed upon her, too, beauty of body and face, which might have been gifts for the glorification of love.
It was one of those midsummer nights when the air, no longer void, teems with an indefinable influence of restlessness. Like prisoners beating on their iron doors at night, the repressed longings were all awake, too—and clamorous. A sense of fear obsessed her, almost of panic gaining force of volume like an inrunning tide.
Eben, she knew, was slowly but very certainly reading an aversion to himself into every small manifestation of personal independence.
Suddenly her eyes grew wide and terrified. Was not her feeling, after all, if only she had the courage to admit it, one of aversion for him? Vehement denial rose at the thought, prompted by the discipline of fixed ideas.
"But why," whispered a small voice of inner mockery, "did you just now turn the key in your door? What was that but an impulse of withdrawal—a barrier?"