“Yes?” said Genevieve. “Well, everybody says your mother’s gone West—hm!—for another reason.”
“She’s sick,” returned Phœbe, quietly. “And it’s smart—Mother said so—to go to Florida or West when you’re sick.”
Once more Genevieve shrugged. “Of course, you ought to know about your own mother. But anyhow there was something in the papers—the New York papers. It was a printed telegram from Nevada.”
“Certainly there was,” Phœbe agreed. “Because my mother’s a New Yorker, and so the newspapers print that she’s out there. They’d be sure to. She’s so beautiful.”
Genevieve rose abruptly. “Oh, all right!” she retorted. “But beautiful or not, all the same you can’t blame Miss Simpson. She doesn’t want a girl in her school that’s got a mother that’s divorced.”
“Di-vorced!”
Genevieve’s eyes shone. It was the effect she wanted. She moved toward the door. “Well, I must be going,” she announced.
Phœbe led the way. In the hall, she turned up the stairs without even a glance toward her departing visitor. Her throat ached. There was a sinking feeling under the high, wide belt of her gingham dress. She longed for the seclusion of her room—no, for the darkness of the clothes-closet. She gained it, going unsteadily. She closed the door. Then she sank beside the suit-case and laid her head upon it.
Divorce! She knew what that meant. Over and over she had seen it all in the “movies”. Her father would no longer be married to her mother: The two might not live in the same house: Her mother would not even dare to come to Grandma’s!
Something seemed to seize her then, to press upon her from all sides, to crush and smother her. With head lowered, and face down, the blood came charging up her throat, so that she went dizzy, and felt nauseated. A chill shook her as she lay. She thought of death, and prayed for it.