A strange day followed. She sat there until luncheon, alone, hearing the soft buzz of the traffic below her window, interrupted once by the maid, who, after her permission had been given, moved softly about the room, setting it to rights. It was not quite true, that she was thinking during that time—it could scarcely be called thought—it was rather that a succession of pictures passed before her brain—her parents in every attitude of alarm and remonstrance and command, the village and its gossips, long long imprisonment beneath those high downs, and finally her parents again. How strange it was that last night's little incident should have illuminated everything in her life, and nothing more surely than her father and mother! How queer that a strange young man, with whom in all her life she had exchanged only one or two words, should have told her more of her own people than all her living with them could!
She faced her people for the first time—she knew them to be hard, narrow, provincial, selfish, intolerant. She loved them just as she had done before, because with those other qualities, they were also tender, compassionate, loving, unselfish.
But she saw now quite clearly what living with them would be.
She intended to ruin the peace and prosperity of her future life because she had met a stranger (for a second) whom she would never see again! That was the truth.... She accepted it without a tremor.
It was also true that that stranger, by meeting her, had made her live for the first time.
Better live uncomfortably than merely pretend to live, or to think you loved when you did not. Why, now she thought of it, nearly everyone in the world was dead!
She was summoned to luncheon. It amused, and at the same time touched her, to see how Aunt Comstock and Simon covered up the morning's mistake with a cheerful pretence that it had never occurred.
Luncheon was all chatter—musical chatter, clerical chatter ... hearty laughter. Lucy submitted to everything. She submitted to an afternoon drive.
It was during the drive that she learned that on the very next morning, by the 10:15 train, Simon would lead her back to Hawkesworth. When she heard that her heart gave a wild leap of rebellion. She looked desperately about her. Could she not escape from the carriage, run and run until the distant streets hid her? She had no money; she had nothing. If only she could remain a few days longer in London she felt that she would be sure to meet her friend again. Maddening to be so near and then to miss! She thought of bursting out into some wild protest—one glance at their faces showed her how hopeless that would be! Hawkesworth! Prison!
Then she felt her new life and vitality glow and sparkle in her veins. After all, Hawkesworth was not the end. The end! No, the beginning....