CHAPTER XVI. FAULT AND NO FAULT.
The next day I kept the house till the evening, and then went walking in the garden in the twilight. Between the dark alleys and the open wilderness I flitted and wandered, alternating gloom and gleam outside me, even as they chased one another within me.
In the wilderness I looked up—and there was John! He stood outside the fence, just as I had seen him the night before, only now there was no aureole about his head: the moon had not yet reached the horizon.
My first feeling was anger: he had broken our agreement! I did not reflect that there was such a thing as breaking a law, or even a promise, and being blameless. He leaped the fence, and clearing every bush like a deer, came straight toward me. It was no use trying to escape him. I turned my back, and stood. He stopped close behind me, a yard or two away.
“Will you not speak to me?” he said. “It is not my fault I am come.”
“Whose fault then, pray?” I rejoined, with difficulty keeping my position. “Is it mine?”
“My mother's,” he answered.
I turned and looked him in the eyes, through the dusk saw that he was troubled, ran to him, and put my arms about him.
“She has been spying,” he said, as soon as he could speak. “She will part us at any risk, if she can. She is having us watched this very moment, most likely. She may be watching us herself. She is a terrible woman when she is for or against anything. Literally, I do not know what she would not do to get her own way. She lives for her own way. The loss of it would be to her as the loss of her soul. She will lose it this time though! She will fail this time—if she never did before!”
“Well,” I returned, nowise inclined to take her part, “I hope she will fail! What does she say?”