“Good-morning,” she said.
The pan of red copper, half full of fat and bubbling sausages, was in Gainah’s hand. It was tipped toward the yellow bowl.
“Good-morning,” repeated Pamela, the wide smile of greeting exposing her teeth. “Why didn’t you come into the drawing-room last night to welcome me back?”
Gainah gave a choking cry and fell forward in the wooden chair. The pan dropped from her nerveless hand. The sausages were thrown about the brick floor, the fat streamed along sluggishly, a hot brown stream, rapidly settling.
Pamela started back. Some of those spitting brown grease spots were already hardening on her skirt, on the toes of her shoes.
“How careless of you!” she cried wrathfully. “You have spoilt my skirt.”
Gainah made that disquieting sound again. It did not seem to come from her throat: it was a threatening sound—outside, beyond her. She was now sitting bolt-upright in the chair. She made an odd figure, with her stiff, blanched face, her unreadable eyes, her uncouthly-cut gown, and her flat, stiffly planted feet. The fat was settling around her, going white and hard on the cold floor. The sausages were stuck in it. The pan was face downward on the floor.
Her crooked fingers were caught in at her throat, between the limp collar and the gown. She seemed to be desperately clawing the stuff away from her skin, as if she could bear no contact, as if she suffocated. Her feet were fast in grease, it molded them like a plaster cast. She didn’t seem to be in any pain, although the fat was thick on her feet. Her jaw had dropped, like a poor dead jaw. Her eyes were blank.
Such eyes! Pamela thought of a mechanical toy—broken. Gainah looked like that. Something had given the last pull at the wire, the superfluous dangerous turn of the key—the one turn too many, the last turn. It was just the same: there was the fixed grin, the hard stare, the obstinate refusal to perform. There had been too violent a pull; now there was Oblivion where a moment before there had been a semblance at least of intelligence. She had always intolerantly considered Gainah very stupid, only half developed in a mental sense. Yet she had never before been an absolute, helpless, insensate, staring fool.
The door opened, Jethro came in.