"I was a little late, and I was afraid you would have gone," Jason said.
What did he mean by that, she asked herself. Ought she not to have waited? She had no experience, no training, to guide her. Nothing but this blind instinct, and how could she tell whether instinct was right or wrong?
"Something kept me. I couldn't get away earlier," she answered. "Have you worked all day?"
"Yes, but it isn't steady work. For hours at a time the store is empty. Then they all come together. Of course we have to tidy up in the off hours," she added, "and when there's nothing else to do I read aloud to Rose Emily."
"Are you content? You look happy."
He was gazing straight ahead of him, and it seemed to her that he was as impersonal as the Shorter Catechism. She suffered under it, yet she was powerless, in her innocence, to change it.
"I don't know. There isn't any use thinking." Were there always these fluctuations of hope and disappointment? Did nothing last? Was there no stability in experience?
"Well, I got caught too," he said presently, as if he had not heard her. "That's the rotten part of a doctor's life, everything and everybody catches him. Good Lord! Is there never any end to it? I'd give my head to get away. I'm not made for the country. It depresses me and lets me down too easily. I suppose I'm born lazy at bottom, and I need the contact with other minds to prod me into energy. This is the critical time too. If I can't get away, I'm doomed for good. Yet what can I do? I'm tied hand and foot as long as Father is alive."
"Couldn't you sell the farm?" Her voice sounded thin and colourless in her ears.
"How can I? Who would buy? And it isn't only the farm. I wouldn't let that stand in my way. Father has got into a panic about dying, and he is afraid to be left alone with the negroes. He made me promise, when I thought he was on his death-bed, that I wouldn't leave him as long as he lived. He's got a will of iron—that's the only thing that keeps him alive—and he's always had his way with me. He broke my spirit, I suppose, when I was little. And it was the same way with Mother. She taught me to be afraid of him, and to dodge and parry before I was old enough to know what I was doing. When a fear like that gets into the nerves, it's like a disease." He broke off moodily, and then went on again without waiting for her response. "There's medicine now. I never wanted to study medicine. I knew I wasn't cut out for it. What I wanted to do was something entirely different,—but Father had made up his mind, and in the end he had his way with me. He always gets his way with me. He's thwarted everything I ever wanted to do as far back as I can remember. For my good of course. I understand that. But you can ruin people's lives—especially young people's lives— from the best motives."