The girl shook herself free and stood up with a tragic laugh. “You don’t know me either, mother!”
That word was crueller than the other; the mother shrank from it as if she had received a blow.
“I do know that, in such cases, there’s never any remedy but one. If your courage fails you, there’s your pride.”
“My pride? What’s pride, if one cares? I’d do anything to get him back. I only want you to do what I ask!”
Kate Clephane rose to her feet also. Her own pride seemed suddenly to start up from its long lethargy, and she looked almost defiantly at her defiant daughter.
“I can’t do what you ask.”
“You won’t?”
“I can’t.”
“You want me to go on suffering, then? You want to kill me?” The girl was close to her, in a white glare of passion. “Ah, it’s true—why should you care what happens to me? After all, we’re only strangers to each other.”
Kate Clephane’s first thought was: “I mustn’t let her see how it hurts—” not because of the fear of increasing her daughter’s suffering, but to prevent her finding out how she could inflict more pain. Anne, at that moment, looked as if the discovery would have been exquisite to her.