For a few minutes Cecily let her storm. She was collecting her thoughts. The mad ignorance, the uncontrolled violence of this girl in the face of one responsibility horrified her. And astonished her, too. She had not dreamed Della was so ignorant.
“But, Della, dear,” she found herself pleading, “you must have known that was one of the things that happen to people when they marry—babies.”
Della shrugged her shoulders in angry impatience.
“Don’t be silly, Cecily. You know lots of girls don’t have them and don’t ever intend to have them. Once in a while a girl makes a mistake.”
At her full height Cecily looked down on Della in disgust. The things she was instinctively fighting against, for which she had endured so much, all seemed epitomized in this hysteric figure of inconsequence which was so helpless up against a fact of life—a fact demanding personal sacrifice. “Incapable,” she thought, feeling strong as never before. And then there came through her scorn that pride again that Della had come to her, and a real anxiety for Della and the child which might be hers.
“If this is true,” she said, “you know you ought not to be letting yourself get wrought up. It’s bad for you and bad for the baby,” she finished tactlessly.
A shiver went over the crouching girl.
“Don’t! Don’t!” she moaned. “I won’t have it, I tell you. I wish I’d never seen Walter. He’s let me in for this now, just as he let me in for marrying him after that mess at college. I wish I never had married him in spite of all their silly talk. Anybody could have known I wasn’t a tough girl. I didn’t stay out all night because I wanted to. I couldn’t help it if the silly car froze up and we had to go to the nearest place to keep from freezing ourselves. But he was so fussy that he got me all worked up, too, and I married him. And now, after all I’ve done for him, he was so cruel to-night. He didn’t care about my feelings. He just wanted the horrible——”
“Hush, Della.”
“I thought you’d help me. You’ve been married a long while. You——”