They were standing together in the parlor. The room was icy; her face, pinched, worn.
“I am going to sell the house and everything in it.”
“What! Sell your family portraits?”
“I’ve had enough of them, persecuting me with their angry faces. They despise me; I feel it. I have felt it all my life; as a child I saw them in my dreams coming out of their frames threatening me! I am done with them, done with them!” She broke into convulsive sobs. She took him by the hand, and led him around the room, stopping before each one of her childhood’s inquisitors.
“Do you want to live with them all your life?”
“No, I certainly do not—but—”
“I’ll have them packed up and sent back to the family in Europe who will hang them in their picture galleries. We have none....”
The sight of Julie in lustreless black and a long crêpe veil made Floyd shudder; it was awful. Black obscured her beauty, she spoke in low tones, went around on tip-toe. There was the silence of death in his house.
“I can’t stand this, Julie. We’re living as in a cemetery; it’s getting on my nerves. How long is it going to last?”
“One year.”