“You’ll explain about the headache, won’t you, Marmee?” Nancy asked, moving hurriedly toward the door. She knew that she should scream if she stayed a moment longer in her mother’s presence.
“Yes, indeed, and I’m so sorry about the pain.” Her mother followed her to the door. “Take some——”
“I have everything upstairs, thank you, mother. Good-night.”
“Good-night, my darling child.” Those kisses were the fondest her mother had ever given her. “How I wish that your poor dear father could know of our perfect happiness!”
Nancy passed out into the hall, closed the door behind her, and leaned for a moment against the wall. Mrs. Warren’s idea of perfect happiness would have received a severe shock, could she have heard Nancy murmur, brokenly: “Dear old dad! Pray Heaven you don’t know that your little Nance is a miserable, mercenary coward!”
There is a certain sense of relief that follows the consummation of a long-delayed decision, no matter how inherently distasteful that decision may be, and Nancy’s first feeling when she awoke on the following morning was one of thankfulness that the preliminary step had been taken.
All burdens seem lighter, everything takes a different hue, in the morning when the sun is shining and the birds are singing, and after the months of sickening indecision Nancy experienced such a delightful sense of rest, such a freedom from suspense, that she actually laughed aloud as she said to herself: “Oh, I guess perhaps it’s not going to be so bad, after all!”
By the time that Mr. James Thornton’s daily offering of violets and orchids had arrived, she had about decided that she was a rather levelheaded young woman, and when, an hour after that, she found herself seated beside the devoted James, in his glaringly resplendent automobile, skimming along at an exhilarating pace over a fine stretch of country road, she had come to the conclusion that that arch-type of female foolishness, the Virgin with the Unfilled Lamp, was wisdom incarnate compared to the woman who deliberately throws aside the goods the gods provide her. Oh, yes, Nancy was fast becoming the more worthy daughter of a worthy mother!
James Thornton, reassured by what Mrs. Warren had delicately hinted to him the evening before, exulted in Nancy’s buoyant spirits. He had never seen her so attractive. She chattered away merrily, laughed at his weighty jokes and his more or less pointless stories, and even forgot to be angry when for one brief, fleeting instant his massive hand closed over her slim, aristocratic one. It seemed too good to be true that this fascinating bit of femininity was soon to be his.