Several hours later Mariana was wandering along a cross-street near Ninth Avenue. Rain was falling, descending in level sheets from the gray sky to the stone pavement, where it lay in still pools. A fog had rolled up over the city. She had walked unthinkingly, spurred at first by the impulse to collect her thoughts and later by the thoughts themselves. It was all over; this was what she saw clearly—the finality of all things. What was she that she should think herself strong enough to contend with a man's creed?—faith?—God? She might arouse his passion and fire his blood, but when the passion and the fire burned out, what remained? In the eight years since she had left him a new growth had sprung up in his heart—a growth stronger than the growth of love.
The memory of him defined against the carving of the screen, the altar shining beyond, his vestments gilded by the light, his white face lifted to the cross, arose from the ground at her feet and confronted her through the falling rain. Yes, he had gone back to his God. And it seemed to her that she saw the same smile upon his face that she had seen upon the face of the painted Christ, whose purple robes tinted the daylight as it fell upon the chancel.
As she reached Ninth Avenue, an elevated train passed with its reverberating rumble, and the reflection of its lights ran in a lurid flame along the wet sidewalk. Clouds of smoke from the engine were blown westward, scudding like a flock of startled swans into the river. Straight ahead the street was lost in grayness and the lamps came slowly out of the fog. A wagon-load of calves was driven past her on the way to slaughter, and the piteous bleating was borne backward on the wind. Suddenly her knees trembled, and she leaned against a railing.
A man passed and spoke to her, and she turned to retrace her steps. From the wet sidewalk the standing water oozed up through her thin soles and soaked her feet. A pain struck her in the side—sharp and cold, like the blow of a knife. In sudden terror she started and looked about her.
A cab was passing; she hailed it, but it was engaged, and drove on.
She leaned against the railing of a house, and, looking up, saw the cheerful lights in the windows. The idea of warmth invigorated her, and she moved on to the next, then to the next. At each step her knees trembled and she hesitated, fearing to fall and lie dead upon the cold sidewalk. The horror of death gave her strength. Beyond the desires of warmth and light and rest, she was unconscious of all sensation.
Then the pain in her side seized her again, and the shrinking of her limbs caused her to pause for a longer space. The monotonous cross-town blocks sloped upward in a black incline before her, seeming to rise perpendicularly from before her feet to a height in the foggy perspective. She clung to the railing and moaned softly. A woman, passing with a bundle on her arm, stared at her, hesitated an instant, and went on.
At Broadway the lights of the moving cars interchanged like the colors of a kaleidoscope, swimming amid the falling rain before her eyes.
At Sixth Avenue she steadied herself with sudden resolve, beginning that last long block with a kind of delirious joy. To stimulate her faltering feet she glanced back over the terrible distance that she had come, and she found that the black incline of blocks now sloped in the opposite direction. She seemed to have descended a hillside of slate. Good God! How had she lived? Her own door came at last, and she crawled up the slippery steps, steadying herself against the stone balustrade. The door was unlatched. She opened it and went inside. At the first suffusion of warmth and rest her waning thoughts flickered into life.
Then she raised her eyes and uttered a shriek of joy.