Helena folded the letter, laying the edges straight with slow
exactness.... He would carry out his promise if she held him to it.
She might drop him a line on the subject.... While her dazed mind
repeated his words, she was alertly planning her packing: "Can Sarah
fold my skirts properly?" she thought; but even as she asked herself
the question, she was saying aloud, "Marry him? Never!" She slapped
the letter across her knee. Ah, he knew that. He knew that her pride
would come to his rescue! The tears stung in her eyes, but they did
not fall.... Sarah must begin the next morning; but it would take a
week to close everything up.... Well; if he had ceased to want her,
she did not want him! What a letter she would write him; what
indifference, what assurances that she did not wish to hold him to
that "first arrangement"; what anger, what reproach! Yes; she would
"drop him that line"! Then it came over her that perhaps it would be
more cutting not to write to him at all. She raised her rag of pride
but almost instantly it fell shuddering to the dust--Sam Wright....
She sat up in her chair, trembling. Yes; she and David would start on
Monday; she would meet Lloyd in Philadelphia on Tuesday, and be
married that morning. Her trunks could follow her; she would not wait
for the packing. George must do up the furniture in burlap; a railroad
journey across the mountains would injure it very much, unless it was
carefully packed.
She rose hurriedly, and taking her travelling-bag out of the wardrobe,
began to put various small necessities into it. Suddenly she stopped
short in her work, then went over to the mantel-piece, and leaning her
arms upon it looked into the mirror that hung lengthwise above it. The
face that gazed back at her from its powdery depths was thinner; it
was paler: it was--not so young. She looked at it steadily, with
frightened eyes; there were lines on the forehead; the skin was not so
firm and fresh. She spared herself no details of the change, and as
she acknowledged them, one by one, the slow, painful red spread to her
temples. Oh, it was horrible, it was disgusting, this aging of the
flesh! The face in the mirror looked back at her helplessly; it was no
weapon with which to fight Lloyd Pryor's weariness! Yet she must fight
it, somehow. It was intolerable to think that he did not want her; it
was more intolerable to think that she could not match his mood by
declaring that she did not want him. "But that's only because of Sam
Wright," she assured herself, staring miserably at the white face in
the glass; "if it wasn't for that--! But I must get more sleep; I
mustn't let myself look so worn out."