As she stood there without moving, there flashed before her a complete panorama of all the paths and benches of King Lake Park—the little boats that slipped here and there under the trees at night in the summertime—a boy and a girl—a boy and a girl—a boy and a girl—to each boat. And the oars dragging most inconsequentially—and infatuated heads together—infatuated hearts beating ecstatically—suffocatingly strong. Yet now—after so many kisses and promises, the lie given to her dreams, her words—his words on which her words had been based—the lie given to kisses—hours, days, weeks, months of unspeakable bliss—the lie given to her own security and hopes, forever. Oh, it would be best to die—it would—it would.
And then a slow and dragging return to her room, where because of the absence of her father and stepmother she managed to slip into her bed and lie there, thinking. But with a kind of fever, alternating with chills—and both shot through with most menacing pains due to this most astounding revelation. And with a sudden and keener volume of resentment than she had ever known gathering in her brain. The cruelty! The cruelty! And the falsehood! He had not only lied but insulted her as well. He who only five months before had sought her so eagerly with his eyes and intriguing smile. The liar! The brute! The monster! Yet linked and interwoven with such thoughts as these, a lacerating desire not to believe them—to turn back a month—two—three—to find in his eyes somewhere a trace of something that would gainsay it all. Oh, Ed! Ed!
And so the night going—and the dawn coming. A horrible lacerating day. And after that other days. And with no one to talk to—no one. If only she could tell her stepmother all. And so other days and nights—all alone. And with blazing, searing, whirling, disordered thoughts in unbroken procession stalking her like demons. The outside world in case she were to be thrust into it! Her own unfamiliarity and hence fear of it! Those chattering, gaping youths on the corners—the girls she knew—their thoughts, since they must all soon know. Her loneliness without love. These and a hundred related thoughts dancing a fantastic, macabre mental dance before her.
But even so, within her own brain the persistent and growing illusion that all she had heard from him was not true—a chimera—and so for the time being at least continued faith in the value of pleading. Her wonderful lover. It must be that still some understanding could be reached. Yet with growing evidence that by no plea or plaint was he to be restored to his former attitude. For, in answer to notes, waiting at the corners, at the end of the street which led down to his father’s coal-dock, in the vicinity of his home—silence, evasions, or direct insults, and sneers, even.
“What’s the big idea, following me around, anyhow? You think I haven’t anything else to do but listen to you? Say, I told you in the first place I couldn’t marry, didn’t I? And now because you think there’s something wrong with you, you want to make me responsible. Well, I’m not the only fellow in this neighborhood. And everybody knows that.”
He paused there, because as he saw this last declaration had awakened in her a latent strength and determination never previously shown in any way. The horror of that to her, as he could see. The whiteness of her face afterwards and on the instant. The blazing electric points within the pupils of her eyes. “That’s a lie, and you know it! It’s not true! Oh, how terrible! And for you to say that to me! I see it all now. You’re just a sneak and a coward. You were just fooling with me all the time, then! You never intended to marry me, and now because you’re afraid you think you can get out of it that way—by trying to blame it on some one else. You coward! Oh, aren’t you the small one, though! And after all the things you said to me—the promises! As though I even thought of any one else in my life! You dare to say that to me, when you know so well!”
Her face was still lily white. And her hands. Her eyes flashed with transcendent and yet helpless and defeated misery. And yet, despite her rage—in the center of this very misery—love itself—strong, vital, burning love—the very core of it. But so tortured that already it was beginning to drive the tears to her eyes.
And he knowing so thoroughly that this love was still there, now instantly seizing on these latest truthful words of hers as an insult—something on which to base an assumed grievance.
“Is that so? A coward, eh? Well, let’s see what you draw down for that, you little dumb-bell.” And so turning on his heel—the strongest instinct in him—his own social salvation in this immediate petty neighborhood at the present time uppermost in his mind. And without a look behind.
But Ida, her fear and terror at its height, calling: “Ed! Ed! You come back here! Don’t you dare to leave me like this! I won’t stand for it. I tell you, I won’t! You come back here now! Do you hear me?” And seeing that he continued on briskly and indifferently, running after him, unbelievably tense and a little beside herself—almost mentally unaccountable for the moment. And he, seeing her thus and amazed and troubled by this new turn his problem had taken, turning abruptly with: “Say! You cut out o’ this now before I do something to you, do you hear? I’m not the one to let you pull this stuff on me. You got yourself into this and now you can get yourself out of it. Beat it before I do something to you, do you hear?” And now he drew nearer—and with such a threatening and savage look in his eyes that for the first time in all her contact with him Ida grew fearful of him. That angry, sullen face. Those fierce, cruel, savage eyes. Was it really true that in addition to all the rest he would really do her physical harm? Then she had not understood him at all, ever. And so pausing and standing quite still, that same fear of physical force that had kept her in subjection to her father overawing her here. At the same time, Hauptwanger, noting the effect of his glowering rage, now added: “Don’t come near me any more, do you hear? If you do, you’re goin’ to get something you’re not going to like. I’m through, and I’m through for good, see.”