She rose presently and began to pace up and down the sunlit room, the black dog following close at her heels, up and down, up and down, up and down. And the weariness, the strange lack of zest, which she had spoken of to Mrs. Callendar, took possession of her once more. She was, in the midst of her triumph, surrounded by the very clippings which acclaimed her, afraid with that curious fear of life which had troubled her since the beginning. It was a hostile world in which one must fight perpetually, only to be defeated in the end by some sinister thrust of circumstance ... a thrust such as had destroyed all Lily’s quiet security. It was well indeed to have humility.
She remembered too that Fergus was caught up in the torrent which had swept away so much that Lily held dear.... Fergus and (she halted abruptly in her restless pacing and grew thoughtful) Fergus and Callendar, the two persons in all the world whom she loved best. In the terror of the moment, she was completely honest. She loved Callendar. If there had ever been any doubt, she knew it now. She did not, even to save her own emotions, to shield her own vanity, put the thing out of her mind. She gave herself up to the idea.
In her restless pacing, she fancied that she must do something. She must save them—Callendar and Fergus—by some means; but like Thérèse in her anxiety over her fortune, like Hattie in her desperation, she found herself defeated. There was nothing to be done. This gaudy show, this spectacle, this glittering circus parade which crossed the face of Europe could not be blocked. She could not save them because they preferred the spectacle to anything in all the world. Ah, she knew them both!... She knew what it was in them that was captured and held fast by the spectacle. She knew that if she had been a man, she too would have been there by their side. They must be in the center of things, where there was the most going on, the one aloof, the other fairly saturated in the color, the feel, the very noise of the whole affair. It was a thirst for life, for a sense of its splendor.... She knew what it was because she too was possessed by it. It had nothing to do with patriotism; that sort of emotion was good enough for the French.
Like Hattie, like Thérèse, like a million other women she was helpless, and the feeling terrified her, who had never been really helpless before. This war, which she had damned for a nuisance that interrupted her own triumphant way, became a monster, overwhelming and bestial, before which she was powerless. And in her terror she was softened by a new sort of humanity. She became merely a woman whose men were at war, a woman who could do nothing, who must sit behind and suffer in terror and in doubt.
Rebecca found her there when she returned at three o’clock, still pacing up and down, up and down, the great black dog following close at her heels. She had not lunched; she had not thought of eating.
“The letter from Lily,” she told Rebecca, with an air of repression, “has upset me. I don’t know what I’m to do. I want to go back to Paris.”
The statement so astounded Rebecca that she dropped the novels and papers she was carrying and stood staring.
“What!” she cried, “Go back now? Sacrifice everything we have worked for? Ruin everything? Give up all these engagements? You must be mad.”
It was plain that Ellen had thought of all this, that the struggle which she saw taking form with Rebecca had already occurred in her own soul. She knew what she was sacrificing ... if she returned.
“Lily is alone there, and in trouble. Some one should go to her.”