The sense of tears came to her, but it was only a sentimental memory of her early childhood, and it brought a smile to her long face. She had cried once when they made her kiss a dead priest—“Qui habitare facit sterilem—matrem filiorum laetantem”—then “Gloria Patri—” and she had wept then, or thought she had, because he was not only beyond glory and all mercy, but beyond the dubious comfort of the feeling.
She heard Paytor walking above, and the smoke of his pipe crept down between loose boards and uneven plaster and laths.
She went—quite mechanically—over to a chest in one corner, and opened the lid. A shirt waist, of striped taffeta, one she had worn years before, some old Spanish lace—her mother’s—the child——
Paytor did not seem to like the child—“How ridiculous!” she thought. “She is good, quiet, gentle—but that’s not enough now.” She removed her hat. Living with Paytor and the child—Paytor so strong,—always was, and so was his family—and she sickly, coughing. Perhaps she had made a mistake in coming back. She went toward the steps to tell this to Paytor but thought better of it. That wasn’t what she wanted to say.
The hours drew out and Julie Anspacher, sitting now at the window overlooking the garden—nodded without sleep—long dreams—grotesque and abominable—stupid irrelevances dull and interminable. Somewhere little Ann coughed in her sleep. Julie Anspacher coughed also, and in between, the sound of Paytor walking up and down, and the smell of tobacco growing stronger.
To take her own life, that was right, if only she had not the habit of fighting death—“but death is past knowing, and to know is better than to make right——” She shook her head. “That’s another detour on the wrong side,” she told herself. “If only I had the power to feel pain as unbearable, a gust of passion, of impatience, and all would be over—but I’ve stood so much so long, there is no too long.” She thought what she would not give for any kind of feeling, anything that was vital and sudden and determining. “If Paytor will have patience I will get around to it.”
Then it seemed that something must happen, must inevitably happen.
“If I could only think of the right word before it happens,” she said to herself, over and over, and over. “It’s because I’m cold and I can’t think, I’ll think soon——” She would take her jacket off, put on her coat——
She got up, running her hand along the wall. Or had she left it on the chair? “I can’t think of the word,” she said to keep her mind on something.
She turned around. All his family—long lives. “And me too, me too,” she murmured. She became dizzy. “It is because I must get on my knees—but it isn’t low enough.” She contradicted herself. “Yet if I put my head down—way down—down——”