She winced and was silent, sat watching his bold, strong profile. Presently she said in a changed, strange, strained voice: "What I asked to see you for was—John, won't you put the prices—at least where they were at the beginning of this dreadful winter?"
"Oh—I see!" he exclaimed. "You've been listening to the lies about me."
"READING," she said, her eyes flashing at the insult in the accusation that she had let people attack him to her.
"Well, reading then," he went on, wondering what he had said that angered her. And he made an elaborate explanation—about "the necessity of meeting fixed charges" which he himself had fixed, about "fair share of prosperity," "everything more expensive," "the country better able to pay," "every one doing as we are," and so on.
She listened closely; she had not come ignorant of the subject, and she penetrated his sophistries. When he saw her expression, saw he had failed to convince her, into, his eyes came the look she understood well—the look that told her she would only infuriate him and bruise herself by flinging herself against the iron of his resolve.
"You must let me attend to my own business," he ended, his tone good-natured, his eyes hard.
She sat staring into the fire for several minutes—from her eyes looked a will as strong as his. Then she rose and, her voice lower than before but vibrating, said: "All round us—here in New York—all over this country—away off in Europe—I can see them—I can feel them—SUFFERING! As you yourself said, it's HORRIBLY cold!" She drew herself up and faced him, a light in her eyes before which he visibly shrank. "Yes, it's YOUR business. But it shan't be mine or MY boy's!"
And she left the room. In the morning she returned to Dawn Hill and arranged her affairs so that she would be free to go. Not since the spring day, nearly nine years before, when she began that Vergil lesson which ended in a lesson in the pitilessness of consequences that was not yet finished, had her heart been so light, so hopeful. In vain she reminded herself that the doing of this larger duty, so imperative, nevertheless endangered her father and mother. "They will be proud that I'm doing it," she assured herself.
"For Gardiner's sake, as well as for mine, they'll be glad I separated him and myself from this debased life. They will—they MUST, since it is right!" And already she felt the easing of the bonds that had never failed to cut deeper into the living flesh whenever she had ventured to hope that she was at last growing used to them.
"Free!" she said to herself exultantly. She dared to exult, but she did not dare to express to herself the hopes, the wild, incredible hopes, which the very thought of freedom set to quivering deep down in her, as the first warmth makes the life toss in its slumber in the planted seed.