atan who traded on moments of weakness like this.

Mr. Hadley opened the door quietly and asked in that seldom-heard voice
of his for a couple of soft, clean towels. Where did Cousin Hetty keep
her towels? In the chest of drawers at the end of the hall. An odor of
cloves came up spicily into the air as Marise opened the drawer. How
like Cousin Hetty to have that instead of the faded, sentimental
lavender. She had perhaps put those towels away there last night, with
her busy, shaking old hands, so still now. All dead, the quaintness, the
vitality, the zest in life, the new love for little Elly, all dead now,
as though it had never been, availing nothing. There was nothing that
did not die.

She handed in the towels and sat down again on the stairs leaning her
head against the wall. What time could it be? Was it still daylight? . . .
No, there was a lamp lighted down there. What could she have been doing
all day, she and Agnes and the doctor and Mr. Hadley? She wondered if
the children were all right, and if Neale would remember, when he washed
Mark's face, that there was a bruise on his temple where the swing-board
had struck him. Was that only yesterday morning! Was it possible that it
was only last night that she had lain awake in the darkness, trying to
think, trying to know what she was feeling, burning with excitement, as
one by one those boldly forward-thrusting movements came back to her
from the time when he had cried out so angrily, "_They_ can't love her.
They're not capable of it!" to the time when they had exchanged that
long reckless gaze over Elly's head! And now there was the triumphant
glory of security which had been in his kiss . . . why, that was this
morning, only a few hours ago! Even through her cold numbed lassitude
she shrank again before the flare-up of that excitement, and burned in
it. She tried to put this behind her at once, to wait, like all the
rest, till this truce should be over, and she should once more be back
in that melee of agitation the thought of which turned her sick with
confusion. She was not strong enough for life, if this was what it
brought, these fierce, clawing passions that did not wait for your
bidding to go or come, but left you as though you were dead and then
pounced on you like tigers. She had not iron in her either to live
ruthlessly, or to stamp out that upward leap of flame which meant the
renewal of priceless youth and passion. Between these alternatives, she
_co