Poor Ann! Sue sighed inaudibly. She was very sorry for the girl, but she had known just how it would be; the love Coats had seemed incapable of giving the child was not likely to be given the grown girl who reminded him even more poignantly of the bitterest days of his life.
She knew Coats so well. They had grown up together, she and her sister Marian and Coats, and his love for her sister seemed to have been born with him. He had loved Marian as a child, as a boy he had adored her, loved her with an all-engrossing passion when they were grown. He would gladly have given his life for the girl who was his wife for less than a year, and over whom he had agonized with an intensity that had almost deprived him of his reason. She had borne her child and had left him desolate. She seemed to have taken with her all his capacity for love. They were like that, the Pennimans; an affection for each other and a tremendous sense of duty, but only one love. She herself was like that. No one had ever guessed; she alone knew who it was she had loved all those years; loved in spite of everything, steadily loved and loved.
It was dark, and Sue could think and feel without her face betraying her. Coats' figure was a vague outline, but his presence was an intensely palpable thing. It pressed on her, enveloped her. What that day had been to her! After all these years, he her companion, his hand on her arm, his first thought for her, and no one to come between them—except the ghost of the past. She wanted it laid, buried too deep ever to rise again. So far he had not mentioned the past; was he going to drag the thing out now and agonize over it again?
She had not answered his remark, and he said nothing for a time, smoking in silence. Finally he said, "I wish I could make the future a little easier for her."
Sue drew a breath of relief. She was quite willing to talk of the future, even Ann's future. "I've often wondered what was best to do for her."
"Has any man ever made love to her, Sue?"
"No, no one," Sue said positively. "Who would? You know how away from people we've had to live—we haven't even had the relations here—it was the only way to do when we were so poor.... Besides, Ann's not much more than a child."
"You've always written that she was a thoughtless child. She's less of a child than you realize, Sue. And she's not thoughtless, either. She does a deal of thinking, but keeps it to herself."
Sue remembered Ann's burst of feeling which had so surprised her. "I reckon that she has grown up so gradually I haven't noticed. She has such a careless way with her most of the time. She plays with every mortal thing that comes her way, Coats—peeps at it with her eyelids down—seein' if it's goin' to give her any fun, it seems to me. It drives father mad to see her. I've often watched her, with the collie, with Ben—with every breathing thing that comes her way. An' she does lay hold on people—if there's a creature on earth Ben Brokaw loves, it's Ann. It's Ann has kept him here these last two years—she can do anything with him."
"It was born in her," Coats said evenly. It was his first reference to his wife and he turned from it, spoke more clearly. "Sue, Ann's the quintessence of attraction—I've realized it to-day. She's one of those women you might wall up and use plenty of stone and mortar to do it, and still she'd draw some man to her. It's her portion—we might as well recognize it and allow for it in the future."