“And the difference between men,” said Jim, “is that some of them are like Michael Moran.”
“I calc’late from that,” she said, “that your heart don’t flow out to him in love and admiration.”
“It’s men like him that make murder a virtue.”
“Hum!” said the widow. “I’ll say this for you, you don’t leave folks fumblin’ round to understand your meanin’.”
“I said exactly what I meant. Mrs. Stickney, Miss Ducharme is in a dangerous humor. I can’t make her out. Probably it is because I’m too young. But you ought to understand her—whether she means some of the reckless things she says. I believe she does. She has intelligence and a will, which makes the condition more dangerous. She talks about choosing her course when Diversity becomes unbearable. Michael Moran is planning to be present when that time comes. Possibly his plans include making Diversity unbearable. At any rate, he plans and plans, and because he is what he is, because she knows he is what he is, he offers her an opportunity of escape. He offers her what she thinks is an opportunity to choose. But it won’t be any such thing. When she chooses—if ever she does choose—to go to him, it will be because he has planned it and forced the choice.”
“Hum!” said the widow again, eying him with eyes that age had not robbed of their brightness. “Hum!”
This was no startling contribution to the conversation. But the exclamation “Hum!” uttered by an old woman who has buried two husbands and kept boarders is not to be despised. There is more wisdom in such a monosyllable than in all the pages of the valedictory of a girl emerging from college—which is generally credited with being an erudite message. Two husbands and a succession of boarders may teach things that even professors of sociology have not had called to their attention.
“She’s so infernally alone,” said Jim.
Marie stepped into the dining-room again—one might almost say pounced. Her eyes glittered, her hands were clenched.
“I am infernally alone. Oh, I heard! I heard what you said before that, I listened. What business have you to discuss me and my affairs? I suppose it’s your meddlesome notion to help me. I don’t want help; I don’t need help; and what help could you give? What do you know about me—or about life? What do you know about a woman? I will not be discussed by either of you. I have the right to order my own life—to make it good or bad as I want to—and it’s nobody’s business. Do you think I don’t know Michael Moran? I tell you I see into the farthest corner of his soul. I’m not demanding happiness. I doubt if happiness is the best thing life has to give. But I do demand to live. Nobody can compel me to rot. What if I do suffer? What if there is pain and suffering and remorse? That is part of life. It is living. And you would meddle! I tell you again that I see what I am doing; that I am not deceived; that I have weighed consequences. If the time comes when Michael Moran is the stepping-stone I need, I shall use him. Nobody can prevent it—”