But she had promised to think it over. He kept her to that. Again
it was the hunter, the quarry, and the inevitable flight. The thought
of her possible escape quickened his pulses. He became infinitely
more determined to make her his own. The recollection of her saying
that she did not love him was humiliating, but it stirred him to
deeper feelings of desire. When he thought of her--as at
first--readily accepting him and his prospects, he had not formed
so high opinion of her as now, being at her mercy.
She stood before his eyes that night as he lay in bed. One vague dream
after another filled his sleep, and Sally took part in them
all--kissing him, scorning him. His mental vision was obsessed with
the sight of her.
With Sally herself, sleep came late--reluctantly--like a tired man,
dragging himself to his journey's end.
Janet was seated up in bed, reading and smoking, when she returned.
While she was taking off her clothes, Sally told her all about
it--word for word--everything that had passed between them. This is
a way of women. They have a marvellous memory for the recounting in
detail of such incidents as these.
"Thinking it over means nothing," she said when Sally had
finished--"thinking it over'll only fix your mind on refusing him
all the more. His one chance was this evening. You know that
yourself--don't you? You'll never accept him now."
Sally crept wearily into the bed and pulled the clothes about her.
"Will you?" Janet repeated.
Sally muttered a smothered negative into the pillow, and stared out
before her at the discoloured wall-paper.
"Sally"--Janet shut up her book, and threw the end of her cigarette
with accurate precision into the tiny fireplace--"Sally--"
"What?"
"Is there anybody else? Some man up in Town--some man who comes into
the office--some man _in_ the office--is there?"
Sally turned her pillow over. "No," she replied. She kept her eyes
away from Janet's, but her answer was firm and decided.
For a few moments, Miss Hallard sat upright in the bed and watched
her. Her mind was keyed with intuition. She was conscious of the
presence of some influence in Sally's mind--probably more conscious
of it than Sally was herself. You could not have shaken her in that
belief. Even a woman cannot act to a woman, and that decided "No"
from Sally had only served the more to convince her. When one woman
deals in subtleties with another, fine hairs and the splitting of
them are merely clumsy operations to perform.
"Are you tired?" asked Janet presently--"or only pretending to be?"
"Why should I pretend? I am tired--frightfully tired."
"You want to go to sleep, then?"
"Well, I don't feel like talking to-night; do you?"
They talked every night, regularly--talked about dresses, about
religion, about other people's love affairs, and other women's
indiscretions. Sally described hats she had seen on rich women
shopping at Knightsbridge; Janet told questionable stories about the
lives of models and art students, Sally listening with wondering eyes,
needing sometimes to have them explained to her more graphically in
order really to understand. So they would continue, in the dark, till
one or the other asked a question and, receiving no answer, would
turn over on her side, and the next moment be oblivious of everything.
"What's particularly the matter to-night?" persisted Janet. "Sorry
you told Mr. Arthur you didn't love him?"
"I don't know."
"I believe you are."
There was no such belief in her mind. She knew it would draw the truth.
She used it.
"No, I'm not," said Sally, decidedly. "I'm not sorry."
"Then what are you so depressed about?"
"Am I depressed?" She sat up again and turned her pillow. "Oh, I
haven't said my prayers yet." She began to throw off the bed-clothes.
"Well, you're not going to get out of bed, are you?"
"Yes."
She slid off the bed on to the floor, shuddering as her feet touched
the cold linoleum carpet. Habit was strong in her still. She believed
in no fixed and certain dogma, but she had never broken the custom
of saying her prayers; never even been able to rid herself of the
belief that except upon the knees on the hard floor prayers were of
little intrinsic value. That she had always been taught; and though
the greater lessons--the untangling of the entangled Trinity, the
mystery of the bread and wine--had lost their meaning in her mind,
ever since her father's predicament, yet she still held fondly to
the simple habits of her childhood.
When Janet saw her finally huddled on her knees, her head, with its
masses of gold hair, buried in the arms flung out appealingly before
her, she turned and blew out the candle. Sally never answered
questions when she was saying her prayers, though Janet frequently
addressed them to her, and took the answers for granted.
There she knelt in the darkness, while Janet dug the accustomed grove
in her pillow and went to sleep.
What does a woman pray for--what does any one pray for--whom do they
pray to, when the composition of their mental attitude towards the
Highest is a plethora of doubts? Yet they pray.
Instinctively at night, by the side of their beds, their knees
bent--or there is some genuflexion in their heart which answers just
as well--they drop into the attitude of prayer. And they all begin
in the same way--O God-- And not one of them has the faintest notion
of whom or what or why that God is.
Whoever, whatever, wherever He is, His power must be supreme to make
itself felt through the thick veil of doubt and despair that hangs
so heavily about His identity.
Sally Bishop, who could not say the Apostles' Creed with unswerving
conscience--to whom the story of the Resurrection was fogged,
blurred with a thousand inconsistencies--even she could not dispense
with that moment in each day, that moment of abandonment--the
flinging of one's burden of questions at the feet of a deity whose
identity it would be impossible to define.
For many minutes she stayed there on her knees, her arms wound round
about her head, her shoulders rising wearily with each breath that
she took.
Long after Janet had fallen asleep, and when the cold was numbing
in her limbs, she stayed there, pouring forth her importunate
questions--the woman begging guidance, when she knows full well what
course she is going to adopt.