I felt I had to go to Mrs. Cromer--I had to tell her all about Walter
Markham, who was getting better and who thought I loved him and wanted
to marry me, and Cheneston who did not love me. I felt I had to tell
her about Grace Gilpin--the very lovely person Cheneston cared for.
The impossibility of struggling through the immediate future alone and
unadvised appalled me; chiefly I was terrified about Walter Markham, the
man to whom I had been so horribly unkind in my kindness, the man who
believed I had gone to the hospital to see him because I cared. I had
fostered the belief because he was dying--and he had lived, and all the
hopes I had raised and the delusions I had tenderly fostered lived with
him.
My life had been the life of a little child until my meeting on the
shore with Cheneston that day, all things ordered and planned for me,
and now I was suddenly called upon to play a role almost verging on
drama, requiring subtlety of which I was quite incapable, finesse of
which I could have no knowledge.
I crept, shivering, along the panelled landing, past Cheneston's door.
I knew the nurse was sleeping in the little dressing-room attached to
Mrs. Cromer's.