What had I seen while the mask was off? A woman profoundly humiliated in
herself but resolute not to accept outward humiliation? It was hardly
that, though that had an element of applicability in it. A woman
ready--even determined--to pay a great penalty for what she had done,
but resolved to evade or to defy the obvious and usual penalties? There
was truth in that, too. But more remained. It seemed as though, with the
hurricane of which she spoke, there had come an earthquake. It had left
her alive, and in touch with life; life was not done. But it was
different--forever and irrevocably different. Her relations to life had
all been shifted. That was the great penalty she accepted--and she was
prepared to accept its executions, its working-out, seeing in that,
apparently, the logically proper, the inevitable outcome of her act. The
obvious penalties were not to her mind inevitable; she would admit that
they were conventionally proper--but that admission left her free to
avoid them if she could. The outward punishment she would dodge; before
the inward she would bow her head. And the sphere of the penalty must be
the same as the sphere of the offense. Her intellect had not offended,
and that was left free to work, to expatiate, to enjoy. On her heart
fell the blows, as from her heart had come the crime. There it was that
the shifting of relations, the change of position, the transformation of
feelings, had their place.

An intelligible attitude--but a proud, indeed a very arrogant, one. Only
Jenny should punish Jenny--that was pretty well what it said. She
herself had decreed her penalty. It might be adequate--perhaps she alone
could know the truth of that--but it was open to the objection that it
was quite unauthorized. Neither in what it included nor in what it
excluded did it conform to any code of religious or social obligation.
It was Jenny's sentence on Jenny--and Jenny proposed to carry it out.
Centralization of power seemed to shake hands with anarchy.

Jenny's mood grew lighter on her last words. "To-night we'll send a
paragraph to the Catsford paper to announce my return," she said,
smiling. "I'm not skulking back!"

"It will occasion interest and surprise."

"It's not the only surprise I've got for them," laughed Jenny. Then,
suddenly, she held up her hand for silence. From the terrace outside the
window I heard a merry sweet-toned laugh. Jenny rose and went to the
window, and I followed her.

Old Chat