Mollie’s lips worked without speech, and Annie became insistent.
“Tell me, Mollie. Let me share the ache at your heart. I love you!”
Here was the crushing straw to one very, very heartsick and very weary. For the first time in her solitary life, Mollie Babcock threw reticence to the winds, and admitted another human being into the secret places of her confidence.
“If you don’t think me already mad, you will before I’m through.” Like a caged wild thing that can not be still, she was once more on her feet, vibrating back and forth like a shuttle. 257 “I’m afraid of myself at times, afraid of the future. It’s like the garret used to be after dark, when we were children: it holds only horrors.
“Child, child!” She paused, her arms folded across her breast, her throat a-throb. “You can’t understand––thank God, you never will understand––what the future holds for me. You are going back home; back to your own people, your own life. You’ve been here but a few months. To you it has been a lark, an outing, an experience. In a few short weeks it will be but a memory, stowed away in its own niche, the pleasant features alone remaining vivid.
“Even, while here, you’ve never known the life itself. You’ve had Jack, the novelty of a strange environment, your anticipation of sure release. You are merely like a sightseer, locked for a minute in a prison-cell, for the sake of a new sensation.
“You can’t understand, I say. You are this, and I––I am the life-prisoner in the cell beyond, peering at you through the bars, viewing you and your mock imprisonment.” 258
Once more the speaker was in motion, to and fro, to and fro, in the shuttle-trail. “The chief difference is, that the life-prisoner has a hope of pardon; I have none––absolutely none.”
“Mollie”––pleadingly, “you mustn’t. I’ll ask Jack to give Steve a place at home, and you can go––”
“Go!” The bitterness of her heart welled up and vibrated in the word. “Go! We can’t go, now or ever. It’s death to Steve if we leave. I’ve got to stay here, month after month, year after year, dragging my life out until I grow gray-haired––until I die!” She halted, her arms tensely folded, her breath coming quick. Only the intensity of her emotion saved the attitude from being histrionic. In a sudden outburst, she fiercely apostrophized: