School was over. "You and the children might go for a month on the beach," Laurence said.
And Julia said, "Yes." But she did not make any definite plans. She was waiting for something which she had never named to herself.
When she was away from him in her room she went over and over the succession of events, and wondered if she should leave the house to go out and earn her living, since she had betrayed Laurence's confidence and no longer deserved anything at his hands. She sustained the ideas of conscience to the point of applying for employment with the City Board of Health, and, some weeks after, a position was given her. But it seemed an irrelevant incident which resolved nothing.
If Laurence had imposed difficulties on her she would have justified herself in facing them. What seemed most horrible now was that everything was in suspense, and she was cheated of the emotional cleansing which relieved her in a crisis even where there were ominous consequences to follow.
Laurence made a constant effort to escape the atmosphere of anticipation which her manner created. When he was not with her he fancied he saw everything clearly. She had always been searching for something apart from him and she had found it. He decided that it was the clearness and finality of his vision of her and of himself that left him unable to create a future. Laurence thought, in language different from Julia's, that a man comes to the end of his life when he knows himself entirely. Emotion can only build on the vagueness of expectation. His complete awareness of the causes of his state allowed him no resentments. He imagined that he could no longer feel anything toward Julia. He was conscious of the broken thing in himself. He could not feel himself going on. There was nothing but annihilating space around him. He reflected that Julia could intoxicate herself with death, and that he had no such autoerotic sense.
One evening, after an early dinner, May and Bobby ran out, bent on their own affairs, and left Julia and Laurence in the dining room alone. Without looking at Julia, Laurence rose. She recognized, beneath his quiet manner, the furtive haste with which she had become so painfully familiar.
She touched his coat. "Laurence?" She picked up some embroidery which lay on a chair near the table and began to thrust the needle, which had lain on it, in and out of the coarse-woven brown cloth. She stared down at her trembling fingers—at the long third finger where the thimble should be.
Laurence waited without speaking. When she touched him like that he could scarcely bear it. Her long hands and her aching, drooping shoulders were a part of him. Even the sound of her voice was something that she dragged out of him that he found it hard to endure. He kept his head bent away from her. His mouth contorted. Frowning, he passed his fingers slowly across his face and covered his lips.
"Dudley Allen and I have separated. Everything between us seems to have been a mistake. I didn't know whether I had made you understand that." Her voice was weak, almost whispering. As she watched her needle she pricked herself and a drop of blood welled, slowly crimson, from the hand that held the cloth. She went on pushing the needle jerkily through some yellow cotton flowers. The late sunshine was pale in the room. Nellie was singing in the kitchen.