“I blundered horribly when I said those things to you. I thought you were a woman who could handle an abstract idea. I didn’t know that everything I said must necessarily have a personal application. If I had understood why you were unhappy ... if you had told me the truth, instead of leaving me to guess it, after the mischief was done—”
“I ought to have told you—told such a thing to a stranger ... when I never more than half admitted it to myself?”
“No, I am sure you couldn’t have told me. It is just the awful fatality, that I should have put weapons into your hand that would wound you—the very knives that removed the false growth from Eileen’s spirit.”
“Yes, and if the cancer is deep inside—if it grows out of your heart ... the more you cut it away, the stronger it grows. God knows, I tried to tear it out by the roots. I tried three times to hate—”
VI
Judith drew near and laid a hand on the frantic woman’s arm.
“Mother, it is the saddest case I have ever known. If I assure you of my pity and my earnest wish to help you ... for Lary’s sake, and Theo’s,” Judith raised a hand that checked the bitter outburst, “will you talk to me with absolute frankness? You can’t bear this hideous thing alone. You can’t take it to your daughter.”
“Sylvia! I would as soon put my hand in the fire, and expect not to be burned. She would throw me out of her house, as an abandoned woman. She is hard and selfish and cruel. I don’t know where she gets such a nature.”
“We won’t talk of Sylvia now.”
“No, I hope I’ll never see her again. And ... Judith ... I am going to tell you ... from the beginning. You know already—the worst of it. David knew, the night before he died. That’s why I had to run away, when I tried to lay the roses on his grave. It made me wild with rage ... to know he was pitying me.”