He felt that face to face with Julia he would never be able to explain to her what he perceived in regard to her husband, so he wrote her a letter about it. "Laurence Farley is our equal, Julia," he wrote. "We owe it to ourselves to treat him as such. Now that I have had the opportunity to observe and appreciate his rare qualities I know that the relation between you and me will never fulfil its deep promise while this lie exists between you and him. The truth will be hard, but he is big enough to bear it. He is a man who has suffered from the American environment, and has been warped and drawn away from his true self. If his scientific erudition had been fostered in an atmosphere which loved learning for its own sake, he would have been able to express himself. He has the ripe nature of a savant. I feel that meeting with you both has a rare meaning for me. We must all suffer in this thing. Perhaps he most, except that I must suffer alone. You and he are close—in spite of everything you are close. Closer perhaps than even you and I have been. But I must learn, Julia. I am struggling yet. I have farther to go than he has, in spite of my superior knowledge of certain things, of worlds of which he has never become cognizant. I have not yet learned as he has to rise above myself. In my slow way I shall do so. I shall learn, Julia, and you shall help me—you two people. I want him to be my friend. I respect him. I love you both. Oh, Julia, how deeply, deeply I have loved you."
When Dudley had dispatched this letter he found himself liberated from many obscure depressions that had been hampering his spirit. The important thing in Julia's life was her relation to Laurence. He, Dudley, would accept the fact that he was only an incident in her struggle to achieve herself.
Yet he was disconcerted by the premonition that her interpretation of what he had done would not be his. He was in furtive terror of being made ridiculous.
Through the tall, open windows of the dining room, Julia, seated with some mending, could see the dull line of the roofs in the next street, and the dreary sky shadowed with soiled milky-looking clouds. The grass in the back yard was a bright dead green. It had grown tall. Flurries of moist acrid wind swept across it, and it bent all at once with a long, undulant motion that was like voluptuous despair. The table cloth rose heavily and fell in a spent gesture against the legs under it. Julia's black muslin dress beat gently about her ankles.
Then the wind passed. The grass blades were fixed and still. In the silent room the ticking of a small clock on a secrétaire sounded labored and blatant. The odor of the cake that Nellie was baking filled the warm air.
Julia heard the postman's whistle and Nellie's heavy step in the hall. Julia thought of Nellie, of the old woman's sureness and silence—a lean old savage woman of many lovers. In all the years that the old Negress had been there she had never showed the need of a confidant. Her children had abandoned her and she had no tie with any human creature save the old man whom she supported who came sometimes to do odd chores.
Julia wondered what had poisoned the white race and given it the need of sanction from some outside source. She wanted a justification of herself, but did not know from what quarter she should demand it.
Nellie entered with a letter and Julia, recognizing the handwriting at once, left it on the table without opening it. As long as the letter lay on the table unknown she controlled its contents.
She turned her back to it and watched the branches of the elm tree, which were stirring again, heavily and ceaselessly, against the fence. Her needle pricked her finger and a rust-colored stain spread in the bit of lace which she was mending. The sun burst through the clouds and the room was filled with the shadowless glare, and with moist intense heat.