In the midst of her madness the face of her child came before her. She hated it even as she hated all things. Her hate for Peter was paramount and a greater hate existed in her heart for her father. Her bitterness seemed to concentrate against her father, for it was he who had tutored her into the thing she was. The education he gave her had blighted her life, by leaving her unprepared to meet its vicissitudes, its necessities, and demands.
She sought in her mind for an excuse for them, but could find none. At last as if some great force had taken Peter and her father and stripped them of their flesh, laying bare their innermost souls, she looked into their breasts and saw of what they were made.
Heretofore her face had never betrayed a sign of hardness. It became hard, and her eyes changed color, her cheeks took upon them a different bloom. Her whole body changed under the blow she had received. A determination came into her and broke down all the barriers to her better self. All these barriers she had erected through years of endeavor were gone, and cast into the dust heap.
As a snake sheds its skin, so Clarinda shed all that had been the old Clarinda.
The impasse brought a new factor, one actuated by a woman of new motives. It brought a woman’s mind dark and seething and bitter, and Clarinda felt the change and shivered with fear at the prospect. She could not decipher to what end it would lead her.
Clarinda balanced her account with life and found it all written in red. Never had she received from it anything but the most terrible futility. Evil was not of her, but she determined it should come. All the good she scattered at her feet, breaking it as a frail piece of glass. From now on she would follow in the steps of those whom she had looked up to. Henceforth, she would gather the bitter, no matter what the poison might be.
Where she would land or to what end it should bring her, she cared not. With indefatigable sincerity she had tried to do what she thought was right. This had landed her in a morass of disappointment, and made her only the mistress of the man to whom she had been married. It was not her fault. It was the fault of Peter and her father and she was determined that they should pay. The price they should pay would be the price of death. For the years she had been married she had patted Peter upon the back and helped him with unswerving faith. Now, she should destroy with the same determination what she had endeavored to build. He should pay and pay in the coin he knew nothing of. Her father likewise should pay, for it was he who had spurred Peter on. Endlessly he told him in long conversations, during many nights, of his ability, until Peter believed he was impregnable. He caused Peter to lose all sense of proportion.
Clarinda was not angry at her own position; it was deeper than that. She would seek her own emancipation, for her life was destroyed. Why not bring down the temple with her in her fall, grind it, grind it out into powder that would leave no trace of its original intent?
“Vengeance is mine saith the Lord, I will repay.” Clarinda knew this line, but it had no significance.
She put her hand upon the arm of the driver and told him to turn back and she directed him to the house of her father. In a short time she arrived. After the car stopped at the marble steps that led to his glory, she sprang from its interior and ran into the hall, the same hall she had come from with hope in her heart and visions of perfect joy in her soul. Then all the world had looked to her as if it desired to cover her with a mantle of good. Now it was gone, obliterated, wiped out and nothing remained. It was futile. In the place of promises it had given nothing and the struggle she had made was a vain endeavor.