more to do, my arms hanging at my sides, the
sudden weight of my useless words on my shoulders. The man follows my
example and rises.

"I shall go away, very far away. Don't mind. That's the good of being a
woman who works; you're not afraid. You may be at the mercy of
misfortune, which is always lurking, but not at the mercy of human
beings....

"That's all, I'll go now...."

In the silence that cuts in I feel how this man is wishing I'd never
go--wishing it so strongly that for a moment he touches love and a path
is opened along which I could take a step, but only a single step, no
more.

My eyes stare into space. I hear the mournful, eternal good-bye you say
to things--this table at which I worked, the afternoon sunlight laughing
through the window, all the familiar objects, which reel slightly from
the separation now beginning, from the nascence of everything that is to
be....

He presses my hand. And I think of all the men you could convince if you
wanted to take the trouble....

If you had the time....

If life were not a choice.

XIV

Her head is nodding and dropping lower and lower, her fingers are gently
loosening their hold on the square of embroidery: my mother has gone to
sleep.

She comes to see me frequently now, and always arrives panting, loaded
down with luscious fruit or bottles of golden wine "from your father."
When she prolongs her stay after dinner too late to return home that
night, I give my room up to her. You can tell--poor mother--that her
visits are undertaken for duty's sake--pilgrimages on which she never
fares forth without a preliminary struggle: "That child--you can't
leave her all alone--you've got to be sorry for her."

When I opened the door for her this evening, I could see there was
something on her mind. Her face was drawn, and contrary to her wont she
kissed me two or three times. Was there going to be a battle?

Dinner was over, but I still waited.

"Oh, by the way, my dear, this idea of yours--your plan to go away--it
isn't serious, is it? How about your position? Are you really going to
carry things to such extremes? Your obstinacy is very annoying. What
whimsies you used to have when you were a young girl, that faddy notion
about earning your own living ... and marrying against our will--yes,
against our will.... Your poor husband is dead; so you've paid, and your
father and I are willing to let bygones be bygones. If you come and live
with us, you know y