It seemed to Katherine Crewe, trudging along the dreary stretch of road on her way to the station, that there was no use struggling any longer in a world where the combined forces were so obviously, so uncompromisingly against her. Her one hope had been Mrs. Slawson. Mrs. Slawson had failed her.
As she foresaw it, there was nothing in her meeting with Dr. Ballard to promise better things. She had told him, once and for all, she would never marry him. He had taken her at her word, and gone away. What she had to tell him now, would only constitute another reason for her to hold to her decision—another ground for him to accept it with easy resignation.
Filed past, in slow procession through her brain, all the haunting years, through which she had tried, and tried, and had had nothing but disappointment, frustration, for her pains.
Dr. Ballard had assured her one could overmaster conditions.
Not when the blood of weaklings ran in one's veins.
Everything he or Mrs. Slawson had told her, that had seemed convincing at the time, was negatived now, by her knowledge of what she was. Now she knew why she had never been able to compel life to give her what she demanded. It was because she was one of the "unfit," predestined, by two generations of degenerates, not to survive. She could see nothing but animus, as her grandmother's motive for telling her. The accumulated, smoldering resentment of years, gathering force through this crowning act of injustice, flamed up fiercely until it blinded her.
When, at last, she reached the station, it was only to find she had missed the car she should have taken. She must wait an hour for another.
She almost smiled. The little incident was so of a piece with the rest of her experience.
As she composed herself to sit out the hour, in the chill desolateness of the deserted waiting-room, her thoughts still harried her, but now she felt them less keenly. It was as if her wits were wrapped in cotton.
At a touch on her shoulder, she started up, trembling, dazed. She had not seen the station-master, until he actually stood before her.