The woman he had loved and desired, the woman who had stirred him, who had been his, came toward him as to a stranger.
[340]
] “I’m afraid I must go,” she said.
He roused himself to a final stand.
“You realize,” came hoarsely, “that I’ll fight this—fight it to a finish? You realize as well that the children will come to me?”
Pain for what had been and what might have been; memories, all that had made these moments a requiem, vanished from her voice. She went close to him. Like his own her body went taut, her hands tense, her head high. Primitive even as himself, she met him, ready for combat.
Suddenly something in her answering gaze, in the black of her eyes that could flame up like two live things, made clear the writing on the wall.
“I don’t think you’ll try to do that. I shan’t attempt to keep them from you, of course. But they’re mine, you know,—and I haven’t forfeited the right to them.”
Without another word, she stood waiting for him to step aside. He hesitated, made as if to speak, then turned abruptly and the slam of a door resounded like thunder.
One by one she turned off the lights. Out across the familiar boards she went to the center of the stage, set for to-morrow. Face lifted to the darkness, she stood where had come to her the struggle eternal—success, conflict, love, renunciation. And to her lips came the question woman will always ask, the question always unanswered: “Why?”
And so the curtain descended on Act III of Nancy Bradshaw’s life drama.