“I think there should be no need of saying more,” he answered.
She did not even bend in assent to his proposition. She simply pointed to the door, and said:
“Then you may go!”
The change in tone and manner startled him, trained as he was to surprises. He had foreseen a storm and indignation, and was prepared to treat that as simulated. This impressed him as genuine—so genuine that he was forced to ask himself hastily if he could have made any mistake, and this notwithstanding he was absolutely certain of all the facts.
“But——” he began, hesitatingly.
“Go!” she said, permitting no further utterance, now that he had said what he had come to say. A passionate joy in her ability to deal harshly with him, regardless of the personal risk to herself in so doing, seized her. She had not subjected her line of action to the scrutiny of judgment. For once thoroughly a woman, in that she discarded the masculine caution which she had cultivated as a habit, she gave head to instinct, which carried her past all doubt, all weighing of chances, to the least dangerous course that, in her situation, was open to her.
Almost an insane fury to send one final shaft that should sting in the breast of this woman seized this man who, by all of his traditions, should have held himself the better together, the farther his plans miscarried. Moving toward the door, he cried:
“Shall I report to my employers—your sons?”
To this she had the single word, “Go!”
When he was gone, she did not break under the relaxation of strain; but rather held herself more proudly, as if to do otherwise would be to admit to herself, the most important individual concerned, the danger in which she stood. Under the calm surface, raged a storm of irritable impatience, aroused by the thought that time must elapse before she could be called upon to face publicly the charges this man would make. She wanted to do it, at this moment. It seemed as if she must rush forth and cry: