“You?” Sophy flushed again, and then grew pale. She seemed to try to speak, but no words came. “Yes! It was not true when I said just now that I was thinking only of Owen. I’m sorry—oh, so sorry!—for you too. Your life—I know how hard it’s been; and mine ... mine’s so full.... Happy women understand best!” Anna drew near and touched the girl’s hand; then she began again, pouring all her soul into the broken phrases: “It’s terrible now ... you see no future; but if, by and bye ... you know best ... but you’re so young ... and at your age things do pass. If there’s no reason, no real reason, why you shouldn’t marry Owen, I want him to hope, I’ll help him to hope ... if you say so....”
With the urgency of her pleading her clasp tightened on Sophy’s hand, but it warmed to no responsive tremor: the girl seemed numb, and Anna was frightened by the stony silence of her look. “I suppose I’m not more than half a woman,” she mused, “for I don’t want my happiness to hurt her;” and aloud she repeated: “If only you’ll tell me there’s no reason——”
The girl did not speak; but suddenly, like a snapped branch, she bent, stooped down to the hand that clasped her, and laid her lips upon it in a stream of weeping. She cried silently, continuously, abundantly, as though Anna’s touch had released the waters of some deep spring of pain; then, as Anna, moved and half afraid, leaned over her with a sound of pity, she stood up and turned away.
“You’re going, then—for good—like this?” Anna moved toward her and stopped. Sophy stopped too, with eyes that shrank from her.
“Oh——” Anna cried, and hid her face.
The girl walked across the room and paused again in the doorway. From there she flung back: “I wanted it—I chose it. He was good to me—no one ever was so good!”
The door-handle turned, and Anna heard her go.
XXIX
Her first thought was: “He’s going too in a few hours—I needn’t see him again before he leaves...” At that moment the possibility of having to look in Darrow’s face and hear him speak seemed to her more unendurable than anything else she could imagine. Then, on the next wave of feeling, came the desire to confront him at once and wring from him she knew not what: avowal, denial, justification, anything that should open some channel of escape to the flood of her pent-up anguish.