As she sat there, so inattentively turning the pages of her book, the foreboding sense of some approaching drama flooded the room. For how many years had she lived from day to day and nothing had occurred--so long that life had been unconscious, doped, inert. Now it had sprung into vitality again with the sudden frantic impertinence of a Jack-in-the-Box. For twenty years you are dry on the banks, half-asleep, stretching out lazy fingers for food, slumbering, waking, slumbering again. Suddenly a wave comes and you are swept off--swept off into what disastrous sea?
She did not think in pictures, it was not her way, but to-night, half- terrified, half-exultant, in the long dim room she waited, the pressure of her heart beating up into her throat, listening, watching Joan furtively, seeing Morris, his eternal shadow, itching with its long tapering fingers to draw her away with him beyond the house. No, she would be true with herself. It was he who would be drawn away. The power was in her, not in him....
She looked wearily across at Joan. The child was irritating to her as she had always been. She had never, in any case, cared for her own sex, and now, as so frequently with women who are about to plunge into some passionate situation, she regarded every one she saw as a potential interferer. She despised women as most women in their secret hearts do, and especially she despised Joan.
"You'd better go up to bed, dear. It's half-past ten."
Without a word Joan got up, came across the room, kissed her mother, went to the door. Then she paused.
"Mother," she said, hesitating, and then speaking timidly, "is father all right?"
"All right, dear?"
"Yes. He doesn't look well. His forehead is all flushed, and I overheard some one at the Sampsons' say the other day that he wasn't well really, that he must take great care of himself. Ought he to?"
"Ought he what?"
"To take great care of himself."