"Ah, she doesn't know!" exclaimed Indiana. "I'm glad of that—very glad."
"Your people were talking of going to Paris in a week or so—you will go with them—on a pleasure trip." Indiana, leaning against the table, lifted her eyes wonderingly to his. He met her gaze, proudly and relentlessly. "You will go with them to America—on a pleasure trip. I will break it to my mother, slowly—that you are not coming back."
A deathlike faintness passed over Indiana as she listened to his calm, passionless voice, pronouncing sentence upon her. She could not, at that moment, utter a word of pleading or remonstrance. He seemed like a rock of relentless justice, against which she might hurl herself, only to be dashed in pieces.
"You see, I have made it very easy for you to drop the shackles of the tyrant and regain your lost and coveted freedom," he added, bitterly. She grasped the edge of the table desperately with her small hands. "If you had only loved me," cried Thurston, despairingly, "it might have been different! But how could I expect it? You have never been taught to love—to sacrifice for love. Only to be loved—to demand sacrifices from others." Gathering all her strength, Indiana moved to the door. He held it open for her, and she passed him with averted eyes, looking dazed and hopeless. "Indiana!" he cried, involuntarily, as she disappeared down the long hall. By a great effort he prevented himself from rushing after her. Sinking down in a chair, he buried his face in his hands. He had spoken the final words between them—there was no retraction now. But so utterly had the serene and smiling little witch taken possession of his heart, he felt, that in exorcising her he was plucking it bodily from his breast. Only the necessity of appearing composed before his mother rescued him from succumbing utterly to his despair.
Indiana had not heard Thurston's smothered cry. She climbed the stairs laboriously, clinging to the banisters. There seemed to be iron weights hanging to her limbs. But this was the result of lying for so many hours on the hard floor, in the cold library. Consciousness, too, seemed fading away from her. She only wished to retain it until she reached her room; then, she felt, she would be quite satisfied to part with it forever. Thurston's last words echoed in her ears, "You have never been taught to love—to sacrifice for love—only to be loved—to demand sacrifices from others." That was what Jennings meant when he said that he looked back with satisfaction on his life, knowing he had served a loved master faithfully. Even Jennings realized the spirit of love, while—reaching her bed at last, she pushed back the covers and coiled herself in its soft depths. Thoughts floated mistily in her brain. "I have missed many things—to love, to serve, to sacrifice. Perhaps it was not all my fault—not all." She lapsed into unconsciousness, but it was the unconsciousness of which nature makes use to soothe exhausted and tired humanity—sleep.
At noon she awoke of her own accord, wonderfully refreshed morally and physically. Things assumed a new aspect. The very knowledge of her love gave her happiness. One supreme fact remained, in spite of all that had passed—she loved her husband, and he her. It was impossible, she argued, that her conduct of last night could have utterly killed a love as deep as she knew his to be. The only barrier between them was his wounded love and pride, one which she thought she could easily break with her two small hands.
Jennings knocked, and whispered that Mrs. Bunker and her father and mother were below. He had told them she was asleep. Did she wish to give any message?
"Don't say anything. I'll be down in a little while, Jennings." She dismissed him with a reassuring smile and a nod.
"Her little leddyship looked so smiling—maybe it's all come right again," thought Jennings, in delight, as he descended the stairs.
"So they're all there," mused Indiana. "I shall act as if nothing is the matter." She continued the process of dressing, without a maid. A cold bath brought the bloom back to her cheeks. Her eyes were very bright, yet tender. She donned an airy, rose-colored morning-gown, dotted here and there with black velvet bows. Standing at her dressing-table, putting another black velvet bow in the fluffy, yellow puffs of her hair, a sudden misgiving assailed her—that her power to win him back might not be as strong as she imagined. She shivered at the remembrance of his stern, implacable face, when he entered the library that morning. What if he would not retract his words, remaining strong in his determination that they should part? Her face looked piteously back at her from the glass. "Well, I, too, am strong—very strong," she thought, bravely. "I am his wife—and I love him." She bent forward and kissed her face in the mirror. "Good luck to us, Indiana," she said, with a laugh, followed by a rush of tears. "We'll fight for our happiness—won't we?"