The letter told her by its tone more convincingly than any other form of words could have done, that this man held her in close affection as a friend, and that no thought of a dearer relationship than that could at any time come to him.
Edmonia Bannister was a strong woman, highly bred and much too proud to give way to the weakness of self-pity. She made no moan over her lost love as she laid it away to rest forever in the sepulchre of her heart. Nor did she in her soul repine or complain of fate.
“It is best for him as it is,” she told herself, as she had told herself before during that long, solitary drive in the carriage; “and I must rejoice in it, and not mourn.”
The sting of it did not lie in disappointment. She met that with calm mind as the soldier faces danger without flinching when it comes to him hand in hand with duty. The agony that tortured her was of very different origin. All her pride of person, all her pride of race and family, even her self-respect itself, was sorely stricken by the discovery that she had given her love unasked.
This truth she had not so much as suspected until that conversation in Dorothy’s little porch on the day before had revealed it to her. Then the revelation had so stunned her that she did not realize its full significance. And besides, her mind at that time was fully occupied with efforts so to bear herself as to conceal what she regarded as her shame. Now that she had passed a sleepless night in company with this hideous truth, and now that it came to her anew with its repulsive nakedness revealed in the gray of the morning, she appreciated and exaggerated its deformity, and the realization was more than she could bear.
She had been bred in that false school of ethics which holds a woman bound to remain a stock, a stone, a glacier of insensibility to love until the man shall graciously give her permission to love, by declaring his own love for her. She believed that false teaching implicitly. She was as deeply humiliated, as mercilessly self-reproachful now as if she had committed an immodesty. She told herself that her conduct in permitting herself, however unconsciously, to love this man who had never asked for her love, had “unsexed” her—a term not understanded of men, but one to which women attach a world of hideous meaning.
“I am not well this morning,” she said to her maid as she passed up the stairs in retreat. “No, you need not attend me,” she added quickly upon seeing the devoted serving woman’s purpose; “stay here instead and make my apologies to my brother when he comes out of his room, for leaving him to breakfast alone.”
“Why, Miss Mony, is you done forgot? Mas’ Archer he ain’t here. You know he done stayed at de tavern at de Co’t House las’ night, an’ a mighty poor white folksey breakfas’ he’ll git too.”
“Oh, yes, I had forgotten. So much the better. But don’t accompany me. I want to be alone.”
The maid stared at her in blank amazement. When she had entered her chamber and carefully shut the door, the woman exclaimed: