“Oh! do be sensible,” she said, and her voice was hard and cold. “You must see I have found you out––why pretend? When a man like Mr. Northrup leaves home and forgets his duties––does not even write, buries himself in such a place as this and stays on––what does it mean? What can it possibly mean?”
Mary-Clare was spared much of what Kathryn was creating because she was so far away––so far, far away from the 192 true significance of it all. She was seeing Northrup as Kathryn had never seen him; would never see him. She realized his danger. It was all so sudden and revolting. Only recently had she imagined his past, his environment; she had taken him as a wonderful experience in her barren, sterile life, but now she considered him as threatened from an unsuspected source. A natural revulsion from the type that Kathryn Morris represented for a moment oppressed her, but she dared not think of that nor of her own right to resent the hateful slurs cast upon her. She must do what she could for Northrup––do it more or less blindly, crudely, but she must go as she saw light and was given time.
“You are terribly wrong about––everything.” Mary-Clare spoke quietly but her words cut like bits of hail. “If you are going, as you say, to be Mr. Northrup’s wife, you must try and believe what I am saying now for your own sake, but more for his.”
Kathryn tried to say “Insolence!” but could not; she merely sat back in her chair and flashed an angry glance that Mary-Clare did not heed.
“Mr. Northrup is writing a beautiful book. The book is himself. He does not realize how much it is–––”
“Indeed!” Kathryn did utter the one word, then added: “I suppose he’s read it to you?”
“Yes, he has.”
“Here, I suppose? By the fire, alone with you?”
“No, under the trees, out there.”
Mary-Clare turned and glanced at the pure, open woods. “It is a beautiful book,” she repeated.