"Why, you-u-u- ..."
Ann's hands clenched and opened convulsively at her sides as she groped fruitlessly for words.
"You go now, Nora; go away from me! What you have said has been too contemptible, too base for me even to answer!"
She walked quickly to the door, opened it and faced about with a gesture of command. Nora hesitated a moment, then, without a word, walked from the room. In the hall she paused, back still toward Ann as though she had more that she would say, as if, possibly, she considered the advisability of going further; but, if that was true, she had no opportunity then, for the door closed firmly and the lock clicked.
It was the most confused moment in Ann's life. The identification of her husband, her several trying scenes with Bayard, would not compare with it. She heard Nora's slow, receding footsteps with infinite relief and, when they were quite gone, she realized that as she stood, back to the door, she was shaking violently. She was weakened, frightened by what had passed, and, as she strove through those minutes to control her thoughts, to marshal the elements of the ordeal through which she had come, she became possessed by the terrifying conviction that she had no defence to offer! That she could not answer the other woman's accusations, that by telling Nora she was above replying to those charges she was only hiding behind a front of false superiority, a veneer of assurance that was as artificial as it was thin.
She moved to her bed with lagging, uncertain steps and sat down with a long sigh; then, drew a wrist across her eyes, propping herself erect with the other arm.
"She ... he belongs to her ..." she said aloud, trying to bring coherence to her thinking by the uttered words. "He belongs ... to her...."
A slow warmth went through her body, into her cheeks to make them flame fiercely. That was a sense of guilt coming over her, shaming her, torturing her, and behind it, inspiring, urging it along, giving it strength, was that conscience of hers.
At other times she had defied that older self; only that evening she had regained some of the ground from which it had driven her by its last assault, lifting herself above the judgments she had been trained to respect because, in transgressing them, she had experienced a free, holy joy that had never been hers so long as she had remained within their bounds. But now! That cry for escape was gone.
She had been stealing another woman's man ... and such a woman!