"I've been thinking, Fanny--why shouldn't I turn that room looking over the garden into a bedroom? We're awfully cramped here. It's just like us to go on with the same arrangements, merely because we're used to them."
Then Fanny knew, and her knowledge was more of an upheaval in her mind than any thought of this revolution against the placid routine of their existence. So much greater was it that she could not even bestir herself to resentment against Mary for preferring to be alone.
The thought crossed her mind--
"How do I interfere with her? It's awfully selfish of her to want to be alone. It isn't as if we hadn't shared the same room for years."
Such thoughts as these would have been poignant at any other time. Mary was prepared for the assertion of them. But they seemed idle to Fanny then--foolish and utterly devoid of purpose.
She sat on the side of her bed, staring at Mary busily engaged in doing her hair. And she knew so well what the meaning of that centered occupation was. Such a moment she would have chosen herself for an announcement of that nature.
Mary was in love, and with a man who had a wife already. She was surprised in her own soul at the littleness of weight the second half of that realization carried in her thoughts. She did not ask herself what--this being so--Mary was going to do about it. As a problem of impenetrable solution, it meant scarcely anything to her. All that kept repeating itself in her mind was just the knowledge that Mary was in love--Mary was in love.
She felt a sickness in her throat. It was not of fear. It was not exactly of joy. She might have been seized of an ague, for she trembled. The sensation was like waves breaking over her; as though she were in water, fathoms deep, and were struggling to keep her lips above the surface that she might breathe freely. But she could not breathe; only in stolen moments, as if breath were no longer hers to hold.
Mary was in love. She wanted that room by herself so that at night she could lie alone with her thoughts and none could touch or spoil them with their presence. She wanted that room alone so that in the morning she could wake with none but her thoughts beside her. She was in love. Suddenly the world to Fanny seemed bitter and black and cold. She was out of it. It had gone by. She was left there on the roadside--trembling.
Love was the magic by which she herself could be revealed to herself when, coming upon this sudden knowledge of Mary, it was that she realized there was no magic in the world for her.