VI
Valerie read it in the middle of a lovely summer afternoon after she returned from Dargaville, and it blotted out the sun for her and turned the day to blank despair. She stumbled through it twice, and though her eyes appeared to move she did not see the flower-beds, or the oleander bushes, or the magnolia tree. She sat as if paralyzed in every limb and in her mind as well. When Lee brought out her dinner she stared strangely at the boy as if he were a phenomenon. She tried to eat, but her throat seemed to be swollen shut.
As she paced the garden afterwards the opposing statements “I must go,” “I cannot go” began a tormenting fire back and forth in her mind. But apart from that she could not think that night. She could only feel that she was one hard pain from head to foot. And she did not know why she was suffering so much about it. Here it was, her freedom to go. The one thing she thought she most wanted. And it meant nothing but pain to think of it. She slept at last and woke to wonder what had happened to her. Then she remembered the letter. She got out of her cot, clambered through her window, and took it out of the box on her dressing-table, and sat down in her nightgown to read it again. And now she perceived the strength of it, the finality of it, the something between the lines. There was something she did not know. Should she try to find it out or leave it? There was a desperate appeal in the letter. What was it he knew that she did not? The conviction came to her that whatever it was he did not think her equal to the knowledge. Or was it that he wanted to save her? In either case she felt she was failing him. That was a terrible thought on which to begin the day.
