Again Joanna's hand jerked away from the paper, while every nerve in her body was contracted by a spasm of almost intolerable pain. She put her left hand over her heart, gasping, the agony for the moment was so mercilessly acute. Yet, during that same moment, the old doting, ecstatic expression overspread her face. In a sense she welcomed, she gloried, in this visitation of pain.
"If I did not marry Adrian," she went on, "what then? The need for self-justification, the need for entire self-expression, would in that very dreadful event become more than ever desirable—the only solace, indeed, which could remain to me. Therefore, what had better happen? What—because I definitely and irrevocably willed it—must and should happen? I answered the question last night, and my purpose has never wavered. To-day I have spent some time in examining the stock arguments against this purpose of mine. They do not affect my determination, as I find that each one of them is based upon some assumption which my reason condemns as unsound and inadequate, or which is not applicable in my peculiar case. I know what I am going to do. The relief of that knowledge was immediate. It continues to sustain me."
Here Joanna rose and paced the room. She still wore the black silk and lace evening gown she had worn at dinner. Her hair was dressed with greater care than usual. Plain, flat-bosomed, meager, hard lines seaming her cheeks and forehead, yet there was nothing broken or weak in her bearing or aspect. Rather did she show as a somewhat tremendous creature, pacing thus, solitary, the familiar and soberly luxurious room, bearing with indomitable pride the whole realized depth and height of her trouble—a trouble to the thought of which, even while it racked her, she clung with jealous obstinacy as her sole possession of supreme and splendid worth. Her restlessness being somewhat assuaged, she went back and sat down to write.
"I do not attempt to account for what followed; I only set it down in good faith and with such accuracy as my memory permits. My memory has always been good, and, since now I have nothing left to gain or to lose, I have no temptation either to invent or to falsify. About an hour after Margaret and Marion Chase returned from the theater, and without any intervening period of unconsciousness—my mind, indeed, still occupied with the decision I had arrived at regarding my future action—I found myself walking through the streets of some foreign city. I was anxiously following a person of whose name and character I was ignorant, but who I was aware had a message of great importance which he needed to deliver to me, and to whom I felt an overpowering wish to speak. He walked apparently without any particular destination in view, yet so rapidly that I found it difficult to keep him in sight. Being tall, however, and of fashionable appearance, he, fortunately for me, was easily distinguishable from all other persons whom I met.
"I say, I—yet I am conscious, dreadfully, even infamously, conscious, that throughout I shared this experience with a woman of different antecedents, of a lower social position and inferior education to myself. Our two personalities inhabited one and the same body, for independent possession and control of which we contended without intermission, sometimes I, sometimes she, gaining the advantage. This association was very frightful to me. I felt soiled by it. And, not only did I in myself feel soiled, but hopes, emotions, aspirations which until now I had believed to be pure and elevated, assumed a vile aspect when shared by this woman's mind and heart. Still I knew that of necessity I must remain with her, continue to be, in a sense, part of her, if I was to get speech of the man whom I—we—followed, and to receive the message which he had to deliver.
"After long wandering through streets, some modern and reminding me of Paris, others narrow, crooked, and lined with ancient houses, I came to a small, formally laid-out pleasure garden in the center of the town, dominated by a singularly beautiful Gothic building, probably a church. Benches were placed at intervals round the garden along the shingled paths, between massed shrubs and beds of heliotrope and roses. Upon one of these benches, being overcome by fatigue and by a conviction of unescapable fate, I sat down. So doing, I perceived that, at the far end of the bench, the man whom I had so long followed already sat. His attitude was expressive of extreme dejection. His figure was bowed together. His elbows rested upon his knees, his hands were pressed against the sides of his head. I felt drawn to him not only by a very vital attraction, but by pity, for I could not doubt that, for some cause, he had recently suffered severely, and was suffering severely even now. I saw that this suffering blinded him to the outer things, rendering him quite indifferent to or unaware of my presence. Notwithstanding which, I—or she—the woman to whom my personality was so horribly united—after making some vulgar efforts to arouse his attention, began to speak to him, pouring forth, to my utter and inextinguishable shame, a gross travesty of my love for Adrian Savage, of my most secret thoughts and sensations in relation to that love, of my joy in his presence, of my admiration for his talents, even for his person, employing words and phrases meanwhile of a nature revolting to me which outraged my sense of propriety and self-respect—words and phrases which I was utterly incapable of using and of which I had never indeed gauged the actual meaning until they passed her lips.
"A considerable time passed before the man gave any sign that he heard what she—what I—said. He remained immersed in thought, his head bent, his hands supporting it. At last—"
And Joanna closed her eyes, waiting for a space, listening to the sobbing of wind and dripping of rain.
"—he looked round at me. His face," she wrote, "was that of Adrian; but of an Adrian whom I had never seen before. It was worn and very pale. There were blue stains beneath the eyes. All the gaiety, the beautiful, self-confident strength and hopefulness were banished from his expression, which was very stern though not actually unkind. Then I knew that he had received and read my letter; that the marks of suffering which he bore had been caused by the contents of my letter. I knew that the message which he had to deliver to me, and to obtain which I had followed him through the streets, forcing myself into union with this vicious woman—in whose speech and actions I so dreadfully participated—was nothing less than his answer to that letter.
"At last, looking fixedly at me, he said, very sadly: 'It is no use. I do not want you. Poor woman, I do not want you. It is not possible that I should ever want you. I am bitterly grieved for you; but you waste your time.'