“Waited?”
“Till I’d gone: till I was out of the house. You might have known…you might have guessed…” She turned her eyes again on Anna. “I only meant to let him hope a little longer, so that he shouldn’t suspect anything; of course I can’t marry him,” she said.
Anna stood motionless, silenced by the shock of the avowal. She too was trembling, less with anger than with a confused compassion. But the feeling was so blent with others, less generous and more obscure, that she found no words to express it, and the two women faced each other without speaking.
“I’d better go,” Sophy murmured at length with lowered head.
The words roused in Anna a latent impulse of compunction. The girl looked so young, so exposed and desolate! And what thoughts must she be hiding in her heart! It was impossible that they should part in such a spirit.
“I want you to know that no one said anything…It was I who…”
Sophy looked at her. “You mean that Mr. Darrow didn’t tell you? Of course not: do you suppose I thought he did? You found it out, that’s all-I knew you would. In your place I should have guessed it sooner.”
The words were spoken simply, without irony or emphasis; but they went through Anna like a sword. Yes, the girl would have had divinations, promptings that she had not had! She felt half envious of such a sad precocity of wisdom.
“I’m so sorry…so sorry…” she murmured.
“Things happen that way. Now I’d better go. I’d like to say good-bye to Effie.”
“Oh—-” it broke in a cry from Effie’s mother. “Not like this–you mustn’t! I feel–you make me feel too horribly: as if I were driving you away…” The words had rushed up from the depths of her bewildered pity.
“No one is driving me away: I had to go,” she heard the girl reply.
There was another silence, during which passionate impulses of magnanimity warred in Anna with her doubts and dreads. At length, her eyes on Sophy’s face: “Yes, you must go now,” she began; “but later on…after a while, when all this is over…if there’s no reason why you shouldn’t marry Owen—- ” she paused a moment on the words–” I shouldn’t want you to think I stood between you…”
“You?” Sophy flushed again, and then grew pale. She seemed to try to speak, but no words came. “Yes! It was not true when I said just now that I was thinking only of Owen. I’m sorry–oh, so sorry!–for you too. Your life-I know how hard it’s been; and mine…mine’s so full…Happy women understand best!” Anna drew near and touched the girl’s hand; then she began again, pouring all her soul into the broken phrases: “It’s terrible now…you see no future; but if, by and bye…you know best…but you’re so young…and at your age things DO pass. If there’s no reason, no real reason, why you shouldn’t marry Owen, I want him to hope, I’ll help him to hope…if you say so…”
With the urgency of her pleading her clasp tightened on Sophy’s hand, but it warmed to no responsive tremor: the girl seemed numb, and Anna was frightened by the stony silence of her look. “I suppose I’m not more than half a woman,” she mused, “for I don’t want my happiness to hurt her;” and aloud she repeated: “If only you’ll tell me there’s no reason—-”
The girl did not speak; but suddenly, like a snapped branch, she bent, stooped down to the hand that clasped her, and laid her lips upon it in a stream of weeping. She cried silently, continuously, abundantly, as though Anna’s touch had released the waters of some deep spring of pain; then, as Anna, moved and half afraid, leaned over her with a sound of pity, she stood up and turned away.
“You’re going, then–for good–like this?” Anna moved toward her and stopped. Sophy stopped too, with eyes that shrank from her.
“Oh—-” Anna cried, and hid her face.
The girl walked across the room and paused again in the doorway. From there she flung back: “I wanted it-I chose it. He was good to me–no one ever was so good!”