"To help, and to help so as to please me. That was the way to take them; it was what they had least expected. I marched up to them and looked each straight in the eye, giving him the chance to choose if he'd gratify me or gratify my son. He gratified me. They were too stupid!"
Mrs. Gereth massed herself there more and more as an immoral woman, but Fleda had to recognize that she too would have been stupid and she too would have gratified her. "And when did all this take place?"
"Only last week; it seems a hundred years. We've worked here as fast as we worked there, but I'm not settled yet: you'll see in the rest of the house. However, the worst is over."
"Do you really think so?" Fleda presently inquired. "I mean, does he, after the fact, as it were, accept it?"
"Owen—what I've done? I haven't the least idea," said Mrs. Gereth.
"Does Mona?"
"You mean that she'll be the soul of the row?"
"I hardly see Mona as the 'soul' of anything," the girl replied. "But have they made no sound? Have you heard nothing at all?"
"Not a whisper, not a step, in all the eight days. Perhaps they don't know. Perhaps they're crouching for a leap."
"But wouldn't they have gone down as soon as you left?"