Something would have to be done. They couldn't go on like this…. Her mind went to and fro, quickly, with short jerky movements, distressed; it had to do so much thinking in so short a time.
She would always have to reckon with John's fear. And John's fear was not what she had thought it, a sad, helpless, fatal thing, sad because it knew itself doom-like and helpless. It was cruel, with a sort of mental violence in it, worse than the cruel animal fear of the men in the plantation. She could see that his cowardice had something to do with his cruelty and that his cruelty was somehow linked up with his cowardice; but she couldn't for the life of her imagine the secret of the bond. She only felt that it would be something secret and horrible; something that she would rather not know about.
And she knew that since yesterday he had left off caring for her. His love had died a sudden, cruel and violent death. His cowardice had done that too…. And he had left off caring for the wounded. It was almost as if he hated them, because they lay so still, keeping him back, keeping him out under the fire.
Queer, but all those other cowardly things that he had done had seemed to her unreal even when she had seen him doing them; and afterwards when she thought about them they were unreal, as if they hadn't happened, as if she had just imagined them. Incredible, and yet the sort of thing you could imagine if you tried. But that last devilish thing he did, it had a hard, absolute reality. Just because it was inconceivable, because you couldn't have imagined it, you couldn't doubt that it had happened.
It was happening now. As long as she lived it would go on happening in her mind. She would never get away from it.
There were things that men did, bestial things, cruel things, things they did to women. But not things like this. They didn't think of them, because this thing wasn't thinkable.
Why had John done it? Why? She supposed he wanted to hurt her and frighten her because he had been hurt, because he had been frightened. And because he knew she loved her wounded men. Perhaps he wanted to make her hate him and have done with it.
Well, she did hate him. Oh, yes, she hated him.
She heard the window open and shut and a woman's footsteps swishing on the stone floor. Trixie Rankin came to her, with her quick look that fell on you like a bird swooping. She stood facing her, upright and stiff in her sharp beauty; her lips were pressed together as though they had just closed on some biting utterance; but her eyes were soft and intent.
"What's he done this time?" she said.