"How do I interfere with her? It's awfully selfish of her to want to be
alone. It isn't as if we hadn't shared the same room for years."
Such thoughts as these would have been poignant at any other time. Mary
was prepared for the assertion of them. But they seemed idle to Fanny
then--foolish and utterly devoid of purpose.
She sat on the side of her bed, staring at Mary busily engaged in doing
her hair. And she knew so well what the meaning of that centered
occupation was. Such a moment she would have chosen herself for an
announcement of that nature.
Mary was in love, and with a man who had a wife already. She was
surprised in her own soul at the littleness of weight the second half of
that realization carried in her thoughts. She did not ask herself
what--this being so--Mary was going to do about it. As a problem of
impenetrable solution, it meant scarcely anything to her. All that kept
repeating itself in her mind was just the knowledge that Mary was in
love--Mary was in love.
She felt a sickness in her throat. It was not of fear. It was not
exactly of joy. She might have been seized of an ague, for she
trembled. The sensation was like waves breaking over her; as though she
were in water, fathoms deep, and were struggling to keep her lips above
the surface that she might breathe freely. But she could not breathe;
only in stolen moments, as if breath were no longer hers to hold.
Mary was in love. She wanted that room by herself so that at night she
could lie alone with her thoughts and none could touch or spoil them
with their presence. She wanted that room alone so that in the morning
she could wake with none but her thoughts beside her. She was in love.
Suddenly the world to Fanny seemed bitter and black and cold. She was
out of it. It had gone by. She was left there on the
roadside--trembling.
Love was the magic by which she herself could be revealed to herself
when, coming upon this sudden knowledge of Mary, it was that she
realized there was no magic in the world for her.
She was alone, unloved, unloving. In that there was merely
consciousness, a staring, hungry consciousness of herself. Only in the
abandonment of generosity that came with love could she find any meaning
in her soul. Only by giving could she gain.
The tragedy of Fanny Throgmorton and the countless women that are like
her was that she had none to whom she could give.
All this, without a word in her thoughts that could have given it
expression, was what she felt about Mary as she sat on her bedside that
morning and watched her sister doing her hair.