“A change!” she exclaimed, laughing hardly.
She stood up, leaned her arm upon the mantelpiece, and looked down at him.
“A change! You don’t know the irony of what you’ve said, Mr. Maddison. A change! Do you realize that each day drags along just the same as the days before have been, and the days after will be? Never a shadow of a change! And so all the life is being crushed out of me. If I’d only known; but what’s the good of talking this way, and why on earth should I trouble you with my worries?”
She was a splendid rebel and Maddison’s pulse stirred with sympathy and attraction. She looked to him like some fine, wild animal, caged, eating out her heart for freedom.
“I almost wish I hadn’t met you the other day,” she continued. “I know that sounds rude; what I mean is, it’s bad enough to be here, but it makes it worse, ever so much worse, to realize what I’ve not got.”
“I wish I could help you,” he said.
She sat down again and again looked into the fire, which she stirred into a roaring blaze.
“It would have been better had I stopped on in the country; I was only half alive there. I just vegetated. Edward, my husband, had what he thought was a ‘call’ to come up and work among the poor in London, so he brought me here. I wonder do you know the kind of man he is?”
“I can guess.”
“He’s good, because he never has any temptation to be anything else. He’s content, and works, eats, drinks, sleeps; he tries to be kind and sympathetic, and—nearly drives me mad. Don’t you think it strange,” she asked, looking at him eagerly, “that I should be talking to you like this? I must—must talk to some one.”