To be sure, he had not shared with her his inner thoughts and ambitions. He had not sought to bring her into any closer mental relationship with him. Was he, too, held back by fear of her laughter?
When she looked into her mind, it was flooded with Martin. He was in every nook and cranny of it. He invaded it like an army with banners. Her whole growth and development had been so accelerated by him that it seemed as if she had stood in one spot always until he arrived. No wonder she had not turned to Jerry for companionship when she had been swallowed up, as it were, in the microcosm which was Martin Christiansen.
But when it came to the world of the senses, she had spoken the absolute truth when she told Jerry that she had never once thought of Martin with sentiment—in the ordinary sex sense of that word. He was master-counsellor, god, but never man-mate. So the moment of his passion had come upon her like a lightning flash, rending the heavens, levelling her house of life to the grounds, leaving her naked and terror-struck.
With the shock of it had come a vision of what love might be. With it had come a pitiless revelation of what her union with Jerry was. It was this cataclysm of her whole world that made her run away into solitude to try and get herself together.
She tried again and again to reconstruct the scene with Martin—to try to recapture her sensations of the moment she was in his arms. Had it been rapture, or only surprise? Had it been a surge of gratitude to him because he loved her? After all, he was the first man to say his devotion to her. Jerry had made no protestations of love; she had expected none. Were not her feelings, at the moment, those of any woman when she is told for the first time that she is loved?
She thought of herself as Martin's wife, living with him in all the daily intimacies of marriage; she found that her mind, here, turned swiftly away to their mental association. It was always Jerry she saw shaving, Jerry she heard singing in his bath. She could not manage the transfer successfully at all, she found.
Then she tried to conceive of her life devoid of Martin. If she were still married to Jerry, and Martin was gone for good, what then? It seemed like saying "could you be comfortable without your right hand?"
Some days she bitterly regretted the death of the unknown Mrs. Christiansen which had precipitated this climax. It was so much easier, the old way, with Jerry and Martin both in her life. Again she was glad it had all turned out so, glad that Martin loved her, wanted her. Glad that she had to face a decision about Jerry.
There was one unescapable knot, no matter how she untangled the skein. She could not argue away the baby. He constituted Jerry's biggest hold upon her. For if Jerry had not given her love, he had given her something in its place which had aroused the one great passion in her nature. She loved Jerry Jr. with every throb of her heart.
Wasn't this mother love enough? It had filled her life so far. It was, with Jane, fierce and absorbing. Man and woman love had so many elements, so many complexities, such possibilities of tragedy and sorrow. Would she not better cling to what she had and let the rest go by? So she told herself one day, only to cry out the next: "No, no; that is the old nun Jane! I want it all—all."