"I don't care what you think.... But if I were a man I wouldn't try to shift my responsibility for my own sins to some one else."
"Will you take your own responsibility? Do you see that you've been wrong toward me?"
"No. I see that you're trying to throw the wrong on me to save yourself. Perhaps you want me to ask your forgiveness?"
"Yes, by God, I do."
She looked at him, under her long lids, with a blue icy gleam. Silence fell—charged throbbing silence; all the bitterness of those spoken words, all their venom, distilled in it. Words that sting and burn like fire—that leave ineffaceable scars....
Laurence waited a moment, then with a look of rage and anguish at her as she stood with averted face, he went out of the room, and she heard him leave the house. She was standing by the window, she saw him pass, his hat pulled down over his eyes, his coat flapping open. He disappeared in the veil of snow. A sharp pang shot through her. But she stood motionless.
On the bed the baby lay sucking at his bottle, holding it lovingly with his frail hands, making gurgling contented sounds. And now she heard the other children in the nursery, she must attend to them, there was no one else now to do it.
She was busy with the children for some hours. Then, leaving them all together in the nursery, she went into the big bedroom which had been Laurence's as well as hers, and set about removing all his clothes and other belongings into the smaller room at the back of the house where he sometimes slept. This room she arranged carefully, with her accustomed neatness, putting everything in convenient order, seeing that the lamp was filled and a fire laid ready for lighting.
In going and coming she had to pass the closed door of Nora's room. At last she stopped at this door, hesitated a moment, then flung it open. The room was swept and empty of all personal belongings—only there lingered a faint stale scent—Nora had been given to cheap perfumes. A look of disgust contracted Mary's pale face. She took out the key, locked the door on the outside, opened a window in the hall and flung the key far out into the snow.
She went once more into the neighbouring room and took from the table something she suddenly recollected to have seen lying there among Laurence's papers. It was a little leather case, containing a daguerreotype of herself, done at the age of sixteen. She had given it to Laurence when they were betrothed, and he had carried it through the four years of the war. The case was worn and shabby. She opened it and looked at the picture—a charming picture it was. The graceful dress, with its full skirt, and frilled fichu covering the girlish shoulders, the pure oval face framed in banded hair.... Laurence had loved it.