“You may as well cast Ashe out of your reckoning,” Moran went on. “There’ll be nothing to reckon on. I know what you want—money. Money to buy excitement, movement, money to throw away, money to buy for you everything Diversity can’t give. I know. Well, Ashe will have trouble giving you a decent meal in another twenty-four hours.”
“I do hate him!” Marie said, aloud, but to herself. “I do! I do!”
“Then you’ll be glad to hear his stay in Diversity is coming to a sudden end.”
Here was a threat which it seemed to her touched Jim’s own person, his safety. Marie uttered a scarce audible gasp. “Jim?” she whispered. “No.... No.... Not that. Not Jim.” In that instant she knew her fear was for Jim, a living, chilling fear. If fear lived, then love must live, too. She did not hate him; she had lied to herself, deceived herself. No matter how he had wronged her, no matter how he had judged her, she loved him. And she was glad, glad, for it rekindled her faith in human love. Love should forgive all, suffer all. And she loved with such a love. It was good.
“I’m through waiting for your whims,” Moran said. “What I want I take. I’ve put him out of the way. I’ve made it necessary for you to come to me. To-morrow you’ll be told you aren’t needed here any more.”
“What?” said Marie.
“You’ll teach no more school in Diversity. You’ve hated it. Well, I saw to that.”
She did not know if what he said were fact or threat.
It did not matter. Moran had made his big mistake, for hers was not a will to brook threat. If more was needed to array her actively against him, he had contributed what was needed.
In the gloom of the porch he could not see the transformation that took place in her; could not see that a different woman sat opposite him—a woman alert, full of the wiles that from time immemorial have been the weapon of women, a woman to fear. The numbness that had clung to her, oppressed her—a heavy fog obscuring the world—was wafted away in an instant, as a fog on her own Lake Michigan dissipated, disappeared before morning breeze and morning sun. She sat there, not Marie Ducharme crushed, ready for any fate that promised a measure of kindliness, but Marie Ducharme with youth and love in her heart—youth and love, and fear for the man she loved.