"That’s not like you, my deary."
"I’m not like me—not like the me I thought I was. I thought I was—oh, I don’t know—kind of a wonder; and after all, I’m nothing but—this. Going to have a baby—pretending to be married—not a cent! It’s a grand end, all right!"
"End, Angie?"
"Yes, end. I’m done—finished!"
II
Not her suffering, though. That had just begun. All that winter and through the spring she lived in a misery without relief or solace. She could think of nothing in all the universe but her own torment. She was ashamed to go out, in spite of her mother’s account of her as a married daughter with a husband gone to war, in spite of the wedding-ring the poor embarrassed woman had bought for her at the ten-cent store. She felt that she had in no way the appearance of a young wife. She felt herself to be obviously and flagrantly an outcast.
She was ill, too, and so hopeless, so profoundly dejected, that she saw no sense in getting up. She lay on her cot in the bedroom, dark as the former one, day after day. Now and then a bit of sewing was brought to her to do, and then she would drag herself into the kitchen and sit by the window, where there was a little more light, until the work was done. Otherwise she simply lay there, her black hair uncombed, an old shawl about her shoulders, in fathomless despair.
Life was too ghastly to contemplate. She could see nothing before her worth living for. Vincent was gone, and with him love and youth; Eddie was gone, and with him security and hope. Whether the baby lived or died, she was disgraced. She could never, never forget that she had been cast aside.
They were bitterly poor, and seldom had enough to eat. There was nothing to relieve their monotonous pain and anxiety; not a neighbour to exchange a word with, not a bit of gossip to amuse them—nothing, nothing, nothing, from morning till night but their own sad faces, their own listless voices, their own leaden hearts, their own undying apprehension.
"It’ll all seem different, deary, when you’re well again," Mrs. Kennedy told her child. "Then you’ll go to work again, and we won’t be so pinched. You’ll go back to the factory and see your friends, and go out, like you used to, to the movies, and dances."