And so it was settled and Kate went back to her room as noiselessly as she had come.
The next afternoon I found her waiting in the University Hall ten minutes before the hour; for our lectures beginning at the hour always stopped after forty-five minutes to give us time to be punctual at any other class-room. After showing her everything of interest, we walked home together laughing and talking, when, a hundred yards from Mrs. Mayhew’s, we met that lady, face to face. I don’t know how I looked, for being a little shortsighted I hadn’t recognized her till she was within ten yards of me; but her glance pierced me. She bowed with a look that took us both in, I lifted my hat and we passed on.
“Who’s that?” exclaimed Kate, “what a strange look she gave us!”
“She’s the wife of a gambler,” I replied as indifferently as I could, “he gives me work now and then” I went on, strangely forecasting the future. Kate looked at me probing, then: “I don’t mind; but I’m glad she’s quite old!”
“As old as both of us put together!” I added traitorously, and we went on.
These love-passages with Mrs. Mayhew and Kate, plus my lessons and my talks with Smith, fairly represent my life’s happenings for this whole year from seventeen to eighteen, with this solitary qualification that my afternoons with Lorna became less and less agreeable to me. But now I must relate happenings that again affected my life.
I hadn’t been four months with the Gregorys when Kate told me that my brother Willie had ceased to pay my board for more than a fortnight; she added sweetly:
“It doesn’t matter, dear, but I thought you ought to know and I’d hate any one to hurt you, so I took it on myself to tell you.” I kissed her, said it was sweet of her, and went to find Willie; he made excuses voluble but not convincing and ended up by giving me a cheque while begging me to tell Mrs. Gregory that he, too, would come and board with her.
The incident set me thinking. I made Kate promise to tell me if he ever failed again to pay what was due and I used the happening to excuse myself to Lorna. I went to see her and told her that I must think at once of earning my living. I had still some five hundred dollars left but I wanted to be beforehand with need: besides it gave me a good excuse for not visiting her even weekly. “I must work!” I kept repeating though I was ashamed of the lie.
“Don’t whip me, dear!” she pleaded; “my impotence to help you is painful enough; give me time to think. I know Mayhew is quite well off: give me a day or two, but come to me when you can. You see, I’ve no pride where you are concerned: I just beg like a dog for kind treatment for my love’s sake. I wouldn’t have believed that I could be so transformed. I was always so proud: my husband calls me ‘proud and cold’, me cold! It’s true I shiver when I hear your voice, but it’s the shivering of fever. When you came in just now unexpectedly and kissed me, waves of heat swept over me: my womb moved inside me. I never felt that till I had loved you and now, of course, my sex burns—I wish I were cold: a cold woman could rule the world—