When she did realize what that thought meant, it had been too long with her to be routed. She was too tired to combat it, anyway, too tired with the reaction of that long, throbbing night to do more than wonder at herself. Twilight came and the gray mist that had been over the hills for hours dissolved into rain. With the first hint of darkness that the storm brought with it she began to watch––to peer out 154 of the window whenever her busy footsteps carried her past it, at the bleak place across the hollow. Before it was fairly night she began to understand that she was not merely watching for the light, but hoping, praying wordlessly that it might shine. And when her work was finished she had taken her place there, her slim body in its scant black skirt and little white blouse hunched boyishly forward as always across the table.
Even that girl who, after the hours which had been almost cataclysmic for her, could scarcely have been expected to be able to comprehend it clearly yet––even she read the meaning of the slackened cords of her body, of her loosened lips and wet eyes. As long as she could she had fed the flame within her soul––fed it with every bitter thought and harsh judgment which her brain could evolve––and yet that flame had slackened and smouldered and finally died out entirely. Self-shame, self-scorn even, could not rekindle it.
Her lips were no longer white and straight and feverish with contempt; they were damp and full again, and curved and half-open with compassion. The ache was still there in her breast––a great gnawing pain which it seemed at that moment time could never remove, but it was no longer the wild hatred which made her pant with a desire to make him suffer, too, just as she had suffered that night through. 155 The pain was just as great, but it was pity now––only pity and an unaccountable yearning to draw that bruised face down against her and croon over it.
In spite of the numbness, in spite of the lassitude which that burnt-out passion had left behind in brain and body, she knew what it meant. She understood. She had hated his weakness; she still hated his lack of manhood which had made him fail her. That hatred would be a long time dying now––if it ever did perish. But she couldn’t hate him! She looked that fact in the face, dumb at first at the awakening. She couldn’t hate him––not the man he was! There was a distinction––a difference very clear to her woman-brain. She could despise his cowardice; she could despise herself for caring still––but the caring still went on. Half-vaguely she realized it, but she knew the change had come. The girlishness was gone from it forever. She had to care now as a woman always cares––not for the thing he was, but in spite of it.
“I ought to hate him,” she told herself once, aloud. “I know I ought to hate him, and yet––and yet I don’t believe I can. Why, I––I can’t even hate myself, as I did a little while back, because I still care!”
It was a habit that had grown out of her long loneliness––those half-whispered conversations with herself. And now only one conviction remained. Again and again she told herself that she could not go 156 to meet him that night––could not go, even if he should call to her. And that, too, she put into whispered words.
“Even if he lights the window, I can’t––I couldn’t! Oh, not tonight! He won’t––he won’t think of it. But I couldn’t let him touch me––until––until I’ve had a little time to forget!”
But she was watching still––watching with small, gold-crowned head nodding heavily, eyes half-veiled with sinking lids––when that half-shaded window in the dark house glowed suddenly yellow with the light behind it. She was still hoping, praying dumbly that it might be, when Young Denny lifted the black-chimneyed lamp from its bracket on the kitchen wall that night, after he had stood and listened with a smile on his lips to Old Jerry’s hurried departure, and carried it into the front room which he scarcely ever entered except upon that errand.
At first she did not believe. She thought it was only a trick of her brain, so tired now that it was as little capable of connected thought as her worn-out body was of motion. Hardly breathing she stared until she saw the great blot of his body silhouetted against the pane for a moment as he crowded between the lamp, staring across at her, she knew.
She rose then, rose slowly and very cautiously as though she feared her slightest move might make it vanish. Young Denny’s bobbing lantern, swinging in 157 one hand as he crossed before the house and plunged into the thicket that lay between them, was all that convinced her––made her believe that she had seen aright.