a man's figure, the face turned up
towards her, the look on it meant for her, her only, not the useful
house-mother, but that living core of her own self, buried, hidden, put
off, choked and starved as she had felt it to be, all that morning. That
self rose up now, passionately grateful to be recognized, and looked
back at him.

Thunder rolled among the distant hills.

She felt her pulse whirling with an excitement that made her lean
against the wall, as he took a great stride towards her, crying out,
"Oh, make an end . . . make an end of this. . . ."

The door behind him opened, and Elly ran in, red-faced and dusty.
"Mother, Mother, Reddy has come off her nest. And there are twelve
hatched out of the fourteen eggs! Mother, they are such darlings! I wish
you'd come and see. Mother, if I practise _good_, won't you come
afterwards and look at them?"

"You should say 'practise well,' not 'good,'" said Marise, her accent
openly ironical.

The wind, precursor of the storm falling suddenly on the valley, shook
the trees till they roared.

Over the child's head she exchanged with Vincent Marsh a long reckless
look, the meaning of which she made no effort to understand, the abandon
of which she made no effort to restrain.

With a dry, clattering, immediate rattle, without distance or dignity,
the thunder broke threateningly over the house.

CHAPTER XVI

MASSAGE-CREAM; THEME AND VARIATIONS

July 20.

The hardest thing for Eugenia about these terribly hard days of suspense
was to keep her self-control in her own room. Of course for her as for
any civilized being, it was always possible to keep herself in hand with
people looking on. But for years she had not had to struggle so when
alone, for poise and self-mastery. Her room at the Crittendens', which
had been hers so long, and which Marise had let her furnish with her own
things, was no longer the haven of refuge it had been from the bitter,
raw crudity of the Vermont life. She tried to fill the empty hours of
Neale's daily absences from the house with some of the fastidious,
delicate occupations of which she had so many, but they seemed brittle
in her hot hands, and broke when she tried to lean on them. A dozen
times a day she interrupted herself to glance with apprehension at her
reflection in the mirror, the Florentine mirror with the frame of brown
wood carved, with the light, restrained touch of a good period, into
those tasteful slender columns. And