Going away! I was going away from Ned! My beauty had meshed him; I almost hated it. I saw his haggard face, I heard again his voice, solicitous for Milly's grief. I know now that pain cannot kill, or I should have died.
Going away! He did not love me. He cared nothing for my hurt, only for Milly's. He loved that little white piece of putty that hadn't life enough to love any man!
I heard rain against the windows and felt a sudden fierce longing to go out and fight the storm. Could not a strong woman compel love? No other woman since the world began had been so fit for love, had yearned for it so hungrily.
Going away! Yet I felt his kisses upon my hand. Are men so different? What is a man, that he should love and not love?
How cold the old Nelly was! Since coming to the city, I had never let John kiss me; yet I thought I loved him. I thought love was a brook to make little tinkling music, and it had become a mighty ocean sweeping over me, sweeping over me!
But I must act at once, I thought; I must go away. I must find my aunt, must tell her—what? Where could I go? Not back to Kitty; she had left the den. Not to Miss Baker, who would share Aunt's wrath. Where could one such as I find refuge? A woman whom all women must hate for her loveliness?
"Ned! Ned! I am alone!" I cried in my agony of soul. "You must—you will!—come back to me, come back to me."
I bathed my eyes and hurried from the house to forget the thought, but it followed everywhere. The rain had not stopped, but it suited me to be drenched, to hold my face to the whiplash of the water snapped by the wind. I went to Meg Van Dam, who had long urged me to pay her a visit. This time I was ready to consent, for she at least was glad to have me; and before I left her I had agreed to go to her.
It was dinner time when I reached home, glad that it was to be home to me no longer; the house made me shudder as a dungeon might. It was so changed since morning, seen now with different eyes. The dining room was so heavily respectable, with its fussily formal arrangements—like Uncle, for it's big; like Aunt, for it's crotchety.
I suppose there must have been a scene with Ned. Aunt Frank was depressed, fitfully talkative. Milly scarcely spoke, but in the curtness with which she turned her sullen head when poor Ethel asked some question, I wasn't slow in finding a meaning.