ad torn each other, and, in their struggle, had torn him.
Justified or not, it was her act in leaving him, that had turned those
feelings loose upon him. It was through her that he had suffered; that
was plain enough. It must have been terribly plain to him.

And yet, despite the suffering she had caused him, he had crucified his
pride again and come to find her; not with reproaches, with utter
contrition and humility. The measures he'd suggested for easing their
strained situation were, to be sure, maddeningly beside the mark. The
fact that he'd offered them betrayed his complete failure to understand
the situation. But it had cost him, evidently, as much pain to work them
out and bring them to her, as if they had been the real solvents he took
them for. And she had contemptuously torn them to shreds, and sent him
away feeling like an unpardoned criminal. She hadn't drawn the sting
from one of the barbs she'd planted in him, in her anger, before he'd
left her in that North Clark Street room.

She didn't blame herself for the anger, nor for the panic of revulsion
that had excited it. That was a feeling that had happened to her. What
she did blame herself for was that, seeing them both now, as the victims
of a regrettable accident (did she really regret it? Were it in her
power to obliterate the memory of it altogether, as a child with a wet
sponge can obliterate a misspelled word from a slate, would she do it?
She dismissed that question unanswered.), she had allowed him to go away
with his burden of guilt unlightened. She had done that, she told
herself, out of sheer cowardice. She had been afraid of impairing the
luster of her virtuously superior position.

Yet now, she protested, she was being as unfair to herself as she had
been to him. What sort of situation would they have found themselves in,
had she confessed her true new feelings about the love-storm that had
swept over them, that night of the February gale? What good would
protestations of love and sympathy for him do, if she had to go on
denying him the tangible evidence and guarantee of these feelings?

She must deny them. Could she go home to him now, a repentant prodigal?
Or even if, after hearing her story, he denied she was a prodigal;
professed to see in it a reason for taking her fully into his life as
his friend and partner? They might have a wonderful week together,
living up to their new standard, professing all sorts of new
understandings. But t