It did not occur to her that Ried Williams might have directed those words at her ear, instead of being ignorant that she overheard them.
It was perhaps unfortunate for Dorothy that she had never been one of the "wise virgins" who predominate in social life. She was not one of those charmingly sophisticated damsels who find in wedded life nothing very new or startling, and who are almost as conversant with the symptoms and experiences of motherhood before the fact as they are after it. Dorothy's education and nurture had all trended in the other direction; in the direction of old-fashioned delicacy, of hopelessly antiquated reverence for the facts of life. With all the charm of her upbringing, the moderns could have argued that she had been left a little too ignorant, for to her there were yet countless mysteries unguessed and depths unfathomed.
Convinced of her own expectant motherhood, it was perhaps for this reason that she found herself a prey to shrinking timidity, to a mental fear and terror which had small basis in actual fact. On some unremembered occasion, from some half-understood conversation, she had received an implanted seed which now blossomed and bore dark fruit. She firmly believed that a woman in a "delicate condition" was liable to strange mental reactions, was subject to delusions and obsessions. She had a terrible fear lest some such delusion take hold upon her.
She did not know that this fear might in itself provoke the thing that was feared.
"I must say nothing of all this to Reese," she thought, firmly pressing the resolve into her whole self, as she lay there staring into the darkness. "I must dismiss it, forget it! I know that it is a contemptible lie. I must never think of it again. It is too low, too utterly despicable, too unclean, ever to gain harborage in my mind. So is that man Williams. I shall never think of him again. I shall shut my mind to the whole thing; it is unworthy of me, unworthy of Reese! Unless I do, it may become an obsession, it may make me cruel and unjust and may hurt the little one—"
She drew a deep breath, closed her eyes, forced herself by sheer exertion of will into calm. And presently she fell asleep, secure in her resolution.
One cannot, unfortunately, altogether eject a lodger from the cells of the brain, however unwelcome that lodger may be, as the Freudian experiences of St. Anthony bear witness. Its presence may be forgotten; it may be lulled into sleep; but no writ of ejection is valid when issued against the brain.
Upon the following morning Deming went downtown to take care of some last-minute purchases. He went by street car, since Mrs. Deming had need of the limousine to distribute her quota of egg-nogg and fruit cake.
Dorothy was to aid in this laudable task, and Armstrong volunteered to accompany them and to serve as burden-bearer. It was nearly eleven when he helped the chauffeur carry out the baskets and beribboned packages to the car. Dorothy and her mother were already leaving the house.
A screech of brakes from the street caused Armstrong to turn. He saw a taxicab dash wildly to the curb before the house, the driver snatching at a greenback extended from the car window. The door flew open, and a figure fairly leaped from the cab and began to run up from the street to the house.