I would have stopped there, but the lift of his shoulders angered me until I finally lost all control of myself.
"I'll not be a burden to you long," I said. "As soon as we are home again I will release you from your responsibilities. I have wanted to spare Father, but I see that I can't—you go too far. I don't know how such things are done, but it shouldn't be very difficult to obtain an annulment of our marriage. The whole thing has been a ghastly mistake ... an impulse I have regretted ever since. But it's not too late," I said, with my head held very high, "to rectify that mistake."
I walked past him into my own room. Somehow the pride that had always come to my rescue was missing now. I was just hurt—hurt, and unhappy and very lonely. To speak to me so! To look at me so, out of those steel-blue eyes! It was not just; it was not anything but deliberate cruelty!
Once having said that I would make myself free, the thing crystalized for me as it had never done before. Of course, I had meant all along to separate from my temporary husband. That was understood at the outset. But it had seemed a long way off, indefinitely vague. And now that my decision was spoken, it loomed very near. Irrevocable. I shrank, in anticipation, from the publicity of it, the questions, the prying eyes. Wright would wonder and grieve—and Mercedes—and I? I hardly knew. On Father's sorrow and self-reproach I dared not dwell. Now I had nothing left.
I rose and bathed my eyes. They were swollen from crying and my throat ached abominably. And then, with a tremendous effort, I opened my door and went out to find Mercedes.
She was in her room, shaken but quite recovered, and full of gratitude to Wright for seeing her danger and pulling her away just in time.
"Where were you?" she asked anxiously. "You weren't hurt, were you? You look dreadfully, Mavis!"
Hurt? Yes, I was hurt beyond healing. But Mercedes must not know.
"I was in no danger," I said, evasively. "I came in just as the storm was beginning."
"You heard the roof go then?" she asked. "Wasn't it awful? It is a wonder Bill wasn't killed—he was just driving the car in...."