“Miss Joan—”
“Don’t speak to me.”
Rebecca’s hands clutched her bosom. She still retreated, strove to speak, but choked in her throat. Sudden elemental shame had stricken her, shame shining from the divine cleanliness that drove her into the dark.
“I’ll go. Don’t jeer; don’t look at me like that. Give me my money.”
“Your hire.”
The words stung like flame. The woman slunk away like a Judas, crept into the hall silently, stooping and holding her throat. In the shadows she turned with the snarl of a smitten brute.
“I’ll pay you for this.”
“Go.”
The woman disappeared. Joan heard footsteps on the stairs and the slamming of an attic door. She bent over her father’s chair. He was breathing heavily, stertorously, as under the influence of a narcotic or a deadening dose of alcohol. She touched his shoulder, shook him, but he never heeded her. She reknotted the twine about his neck, dropped the key into his bosom, and refastened his shirt.
Joan stood at her full height for a moment with her hands over her eyes, thinking. She had grown calm again after her passion, but the same solemn resolve abode in her mind. Childhood had elapsed in an hour, a brief sunset swallowed up in gloom. Henceforth the unknown stretched forward streaked with the imagined amber of the dawn. A woman, she had the woman’s part to play amid the stress of evil days.