The prospect from her window offered no relief from the interior; it was true that in the other direction she could catch glimpses of the harbor, by leaning out she could get the comparatively full sweep at the bottom of the street; but there were usually things ugly and restraining between her and the freedom of the horizon. Her favorite place had been at the edge of the grass above the tide; but, since his return, Edward Dunsack had hit upon it too, and his proximity made her increasingly uneasy. For one thing he talked to himself out loud, principally in Chinese, and the sliding unintelligible tongue, accompanied by the sight of his gaunt yellow face, his inattentive fixed eyes, gave her an icy shiver. It was almost worse when he conversed with her in a palpable effort at an effect of sympathy.
She rose and wandered finally to the embankment of the garden. The water shimmered under the full flood of afternoon; she was gazing at the distance in an aimless manner that had lately fastened on her when she heard a stirring of the grass behind her and Edward Dunsack approached. He was livid in the pitiless light, and seemed terribly fragile, a thing that a mere clap of thunder might crumble to nothing; she felt that she could sweep him away with a broom; yet at the same time there were startling gleams of inner violence, a bitter energy, an effect of deepness, that appalled her.
"If you should ask me," he declared, "if my opinion is of any value, I'd say that Ammidon owed you considerable. He led you to expect something better than his running away without a word; I'd have an explanation out of him. Of course, if he had come back married—this affair with a Chinese woman isn't that—it would be all over. But, somehow, with things as they are, I can't believe that it is."
"Do you expect me to go to their house, like you did?" she replied resentfully.
He turned such a malicious face on her that instinctively she moved back. For a moment he was silent, his meager leaden lips drawn tight over dark teeth in a dry grin, his fingers like curved wires; then, relaxing, he cursed the entire house of Ammidon. "The truth is," he ended, "that you were a little fool; you had everything, everything, in your hand and threw it away." His gaze strayed from her to the surface of the water, a short distance from the land. "Threw it away," he repeated; "it can't be got in this country either."
He was, she thought, crazy. However, all that he said about Gerrit lingered in her mind; it fanned to new life the embers of her rebellion. If a chance should come she would let Gerrit Ammidon know something of the wrong he had done her. As her uncle had pointed out, the Chinese woman was different from an American, a white woman. Their entire position, Gerrit's and her own, was peculiar, outside ordinary judgments.
She saw him occasionally from a distance, as she must continue to do while he was in Salem, since no opportunity had been made for them to exchange words. That must come from Gerrit.
Her mother called her, and she went in, finding the elder in the kitchen. "I can't get enough heat to bake," she worried; "you can bear your hand right in the oven. Your grandfather won't have his sponge biscuit for supper." Nettie declared, "I certainly wouldn't let it bother me. Just tell him and let him say what he likes." Her mother turned palpably startled. "But—", she began weakly.
"I know exactly what you're going to say," Nettie cut in, "he has it every night and he'll expect it. How much, I'd like to ask, have you been expecting all your life and getting nothing? And now I am the same. I don't believe we're as wicked as grandfather lets on, and I'm certain he's not so good as he thinks. I don't admit we are going to hell, either; if I did I can tell you I'd be different. I'd have a good time like some other girls I see. I guess it would be good, anyhow, with silk flounces four yards around. I'm what I am because I don't listen to him; I don't pay any attention to the pious old women who make long faces at us."
"You mustn't talk like that, Nettie," her mother protested anxiously. "It has a right hard sound. Your grandfather is a very upright religious man. It's proper for those who sin to suffer in this world that they may be humble for the next."