“Lou. She’s already dead now.”
“He said, ‘You see how it is with me....’ He brought her in the hall of the festival. He came inside the door with her.”
“Oh, I can’t bear not....”
“‘I brought her here so’s you’d see for your own self.’”
Suddenly Lethe turned upon her and threw her arms about her neck, holding her in a deep and tender embrace for a long instant, a powerful maternal caress. Theodosia could feel the impact of the stiffened muscles when, after relaxation, they leaped to renewed force, and she could hear the deep sob of hate where it arose and shook Lethe’s bosom with a force that beat with pain upon her own more slender body. When Lethe turned away toward the table again she sat leaning upon it as before. She seemed to have sunk into a dream.
People were passing, voices talking softly, steps falling unevenly on the rough road. Americy had fallen into a state of quiet weeping, her arms about Stig’s shoulders. Then Lethe lifted her head suddenly as if she were hearing something from without. Her hand leaped to the knife-handle with such suddenness and such force that Theodosia’s hand was swept off the board. Then Lethe had sprung from her place and had rushed out at the door. Theodosia sat bowed over the table, staring at the place where Lethe’s hand had been, or her eyes would dart about over the board, looking for the knife, expecting to see the knife where it had lain. A remote footstep went by in the street or another paused at the gate, or drifted on. She accepted these as a part of the night outside.
After a long while she moved in her seat, her body pained with its long, stiff pose, and after she had stared at her own hands and had stretched them on the top of the table and turned them about, searching for some sign or recognition, she arose and stood beside Lethe’s chair where it had been pushed roughly back and overturned. It was a token of Lethe’s going. Lethe was gone. The knife was gone. She walked to the door and looked out, up and down the quiet street, but the church was dark now and the houses were shut and quiet. Once she called “Lethe!” from the doorway, but there was no answer and she heard no footfalls anywhere in the dark.
When she came back to the room again Americy was caressing Stig with a deeply amorous intent and he had ceased to cry out his taunts after Lethe’s going. He was laughing in a hideous way, returning Americy’s caresses. She stopped before them, standing before the bed where they sat.
“Come on now, Stig, and go with me. It’s time to go now,” she said.
“Me, I don’t aim to go,” he said. “I don’t live in stable no more.”