All this without a pause, pouring over the numbed parts of Nancy's mind like thin sweetish oil. Nancy considers wearily. Yes, Oliver should apologize. Yes, it is only being properly dignified not to call up the Rosario again to find if he is there. Yes, if he truly loves her, he will call—he will come—and the clock hands are marching on toward ten-seven and his train like stiff little soldiers and mother is talking, talking—
“Not that I wish or have wished to influence your mind in any way, my darling, but environment and propinquity count for mountains in such first youthful attachments and sometimes when we are older to be looked back upon with such regret. Nor would I ever have Words Spoken that should seem to injure the choice of my daughter's heart—but when young men cannot provide even Hovels for their fiancées a reasonable time having been given, it is only just that they should release them and you looking like death all these last two months. Never wishing that my own daughter should act in Ways dishonorable in the slightest but time is the Test in such matters and if such tests are not to be survived it is best they should end and no one can deny that the young man talks very queerly and was often quite disrespectful to you though you may say that was joking but it would not have been joking in my day and young men with queer nervous eyes and hands I never have nor will quite trust—”
But it's Oliver that's doing this, Oliver who turned funny and white when she cut her finger with the breadknife making sandwiches and wanted her to put all sorts of things on it. Oliver who was always so sweet when she was unreasonable and always the first to come looking unhappy after they'd quarrelled even a little and say it was all his fault. Why the very last letter she got from him was the one that said if she ever stopped loving him he knew he'd die.
“And when things are ended it is better that such things should be though doubtless not necessary to put an announcement in the paper yet since God in his infinite wisdom arranges all things for the best. And with such a splendid position opening before her it would be only dignified to bring the young man to his senses for it would not be right to let unreasonable young men stand in the way of advantages offered by Foreign Travel and study and these things are soon forgotten, my dear, and if nervous young men will not admit like gentlemen that they are in the wrong when only engaged what kind of husbands will they make when married forever? And is not a broken engagement better than lifelong unhappiness when there are so many too many sinful people divorcing each other every day and all men who write for their living use stimulants, my dear, such is literary history and my dearest have your cry out on mother's shoulder.”
The sweetish oil has risen about Nancy relentlessly—it is up to her waist now and still it keeps talking and flowing and creeping higher. Very soon when the fatter black soldier on the clock-face has only hitched himself along a little, it will be over her head and the roving Nancy, the sparkling Nancy, the Nancy that fell in love will be under it like a calm body, never to rise or run or be kissed with light seeking kisses on the soft of her throat again. There will only be a dignified Nancy, a sensible Nancy, a Nancy going to Paris to study and be successful, a Nancy who, sooner or later will marry “Some good, clean man.”
A little tinkle of chimes from the clock. Six minutes more. The Nancy that was stands on tiptoe, every eager and tameless bit of her hoping, hoping. If mother weren't there that Nancy would have been at the telephone an hour ago in spite of young people's pride and old people's self-respect and all the thousand and one knife-faced fetishes that all the correct and common-sensible people hug close and worship because they hurt.
She can see the train sliding out of the station. Ollie is in it and his face is stiff with surprise and unforgiveness like the face of some horrible stranger you went up to and spoke to by mistake, thinking he was your friend. By the time the train is well started he will have begun talking to that fluffy girl in the other half of the Pullman—no, that isn't worthy, he wouldn't—but oh Ollie, Ollie!
Half an hour later the telephone rings. Nancy is finishing the breakfast dishes—her hands jump as she hears it—a slippery plate slops back into the water and as she dives after it she realizes painfully that the new water is much too hot.
“What is it, mother?” For an instant the Nancy who has no real self-respect is talking again.
“Just a minute, Isabella. Mrs. Winters, dear. Don't you want to speak to her?”