“I will go with you to the car,” he said. “I feel that I ought to be ashamed. And it frightens me that I am not. Perhaps I am ashamed, but proud of it.”
“Good-night.” She held out her hand. “Good-bye. I am used to going about alone. I prefer it. Good-bye.”
Those were days of restless waiting, of advance and retreat, of strong resolves suddenly and weakly crumbling into shifting mists. She said to herself many times each day, “I shall not, I cannot see him again.” She assured herself that she had herself under proper control. But there was a voice that called mockingly from a subcellar of her mind: “I am a prisoner, but I am here.”
One morning at breakfast, after what she thought a very adroit “leading up,” she ventured to say to Joan: “What do you think of a woman who falls in love with a married man?”
Joan kept her expression steady. To herself she said: “I thought so. It isn’t in a woman’s nature to be thoroughly interested in life unless there is some one man.” Aloud she said: “Why, I think she ought to bestir herself to fall out again.”
“But suppose that she didn’t wish to.”
“Then I think she is—imbecile.”
“You are so uncompromising, Joan,” protested Emily.
“Well, I don’t think much of women who intrigue, or of men either. It’s a sneaky, lying, muddy business.”