“Jason! Oh, Jason! I understand you now! I know that you’ve always loved me. But you couldn’t, you simply couldn’t, make me the mother of your child when you thought it would be born through me to the suffering you have known. Oh, Jason, it wasn’t fair of you! Your love always has been mine! Your very body is mine! Your child should have been mine!”
As Mahala talked she smoothed his hair, she beat his hands, she tried with her fingers to make his eyes open. Ellen stood and watched. When Jason came to his senses and realized where he was, she saw him look up at Mahala, and then she saw him cover his face with his hands. She watched with a kind of dumb indifference while his body was torn and racked with the deep sobbing that seemed to rend him through and through.
She saw Mahala kneeling before him, looking at him. She heard her saying to him: “I understand now, Jason. I understand you now!”
She watched him struggle to a rising posture. She saw him reach out his hands and help Mahala to her feet. She heard a voice that she did not know crying: “Great God! What have I done? If I had not been a common thing, a vile thing, myself, I might have known!”
Then Mahala laid her hands on his arm. She looked up at him and said quietly: “Square your shoulders, Jason. You’ve got to adjust them to the burden they must carry for the rest of your life. We both know now, but we must finish our lives as if we didn’t.”
Then Ellen saw Jason lean forward. She saw his strong hands reach out. She heard him cry: “Mahala, you know, you always have known, how I love you. If there had been in me the manhood to wait for this hour, would you have been mine?”
She watched Mahala lay both her hands in his. She saw her look at Jason for a long time. She saw the smile of ecstasy that broke over her face. She heard a sweetness she never before had heard in the tones of a human voice as Mahala said: “Why, Jason, when I think it all out, I can’t remember the time when my heart was not fighting your battles for you—when I didn’t love you.”
Standing there, Ellen saw Jason gather Mahala in his arms, lift her clear of the ground, and kiss her face, her hair, her shoulders, even, in a passion of utter despair.
Then Ellen came in for her share of the Moreland tragedy. She turned softly. Lightly she picked her steps around the house. She flashed through the gate; with flying feet she ran back down the road to her home. She had forgotten how heavy the baby was. There seemed to be wings on her feet. When she reached home, she laid him in his cradle because that was the thing she was accustomed to doing when he was asleep. Then she dropped on her knees beside him and caught his little hands, and without caring whether she awoke him or not, she laid them against her face, on her throat, on her eyes, on her hair. At last she found her voice.
She told him: “Your father does not love me. He loves Mahala. He always has loved her. He is really hers and you should be hers. Oh, Baby, tell me what I must do!”