The curtness of retort roused Anna’s latent antagonism. “It is,” she said, in a hard voice that startled her as she heard it. Had she ever spoken so to any one before? She felt frightened, as though her very nature had changed without her knowing it.... Feeling the girl’s astonished gaze still on her, she continued: “The suddenness of the change has naturally surprised me. When I left you it was understood that you were to reserve your decision——”
“Yes.”
“And now——?” Anna waited for a reply that did not come. She did not understand the girl’s attitude, the edge of irony in her short syllables, the plainly premeditated determination to lay the burden of proof on her interlocutor. Anna felt the sudden need to lift their intercourse above this mean level of defiance and distrust. She looked appealingly at Sophy.
“Isn’t it best that we should speak quite frankly? It’s this change on your part that perplexes me. You can hardly be surprised at that. It’s true, I asked you not to break with Owen too abruptly—and I asked it, believe me, as much for your sake as for his: I wanted you to take time to think over the difficulty that seems to have arisen between you. The fact that you felt it required thinking over seemed to show you wouldn’t take the final step lightly—wouldn’t, I mean, accept of Owen more than you could give him. But your change of mind obliges me to ask the question I thought you would have asked yourself. Is there any reason why you shouldn’t marry Owen?”
She stopped a little breathlessly, her eyes on Sophy Viner’s burning face. “Any reason——? What do you mean by a reason?”
Anna continued to look at her gravely. “Do you love some one else?” she asked.
Sophy’s first look was one of wonder and a faint relief; then she gave back the other’s scrutiny in a glance of indescribable reproach. “Ah, you might have waited!” she exclaimed.
“Waited?”
“Till I’d gone: till I was out of the house. You might have known ... you might have guessed...” She turned her eyes again on Anna. “I only meant to let him hope a little longer, so that he shouldn’t suspect anything; of course I can’t marry him,” she said.
Anna stood motionless, silenced by the shock of the avowal. She too was trembling, less with anger than with a confused compassion. But the feeling was so blent with others, less generous and more obscure, that she found no words to express it, and the two women faced each other without speaking.