She would come back—and then....
They would start all over again—sensibly.
5
Rose-Ann, meanwhile, as her husband supposed, was at her father’s home in Springfield. If her presence there excited any curiosity, she was scarcely aware of it. She was not concerned with anything but the problem of herself and Felix....
She was not, however, as he sometimes imagined, waiting for a letter from him to make easy her return home. She was, as she had told him, trying to “think things out.”
She had gone away with that sentence of his ringing in her mind: “So you didn’t mean it after all!”
She had not slept that night, on the train; nor very much since that time. She was too busy trying to think things out; and the chief thing to think out was: had she meant it when she offered Felix his freedom?
No, obviously enough! And yet her pride revolted from that fact. Had she been a liar, a hypocrite, all this while? Had she only pretended? It was too shameful....
She really had meant it. She had been in earnest. She had understood what she was saying. She had thought she could do it....
Was she too weak, then? Oh, no! It was a mere momentary weakness, a spiritual infirmity that she had not expected, but that she could have conquered. If only Felix had not come in just then! What a fool she must have seemed! What a liar!