In such cross-currents of feeling, one does not think consecutively.
Desires and motives jumbled together until Helena said to herself
desperately, that she would not try to answer Lloyd's letter for a day
or two. After all, as he had so clearly indicated, there was no hurry;
she would think it over a little longer.
But as she thought, the next day and the next, the wound to her
affection and her vanity grew more unbearable, and her feeling of
responsibility waned. The sense of guilt had been awakened in her by
her recognition of a broken Law; but as the sense of sin was as far
from her consciousness as ever, she was able to argue that if no one
knew she was guilty, no further harm could be done. So why kill what
lingering love there might be in Lloyd's heart by insisting that he
keep his promise? With that worn face of hers, how could she insist!
And suppose she did not? Suppose she gave up that hungry desire to be
like other people, arranged to leave Old Chester--on that point she
had no uncertainty--but did not make any demand upon him? It was
perfectly possible that he would be shamed into keeping his promise.
She said to herself that, at any rate, she would wait a week until she
had calmed down and could write with moderation and good humor.
Little by little the purpose of diplomacy strengthened, and with it a
determination to keep his love--what there was of it--at the price of
that "first arrangement." For, after all, the harm was done; Sam
Wright was dead. She was his murderer, she reminded herself, sullenly,
but nothing like that could ever happen again, so why should she not
take what poor happiness she could get?
Of course this acceptance of the situation veered every day in gusts
of misery and terror; but, on the whole, the desire for peace
prevailed. Yet the week she had allowed herself in which to think it
over, lengthened to ten days before she began to write her letter. She
sat down at her desk late in the afternoon, but by tea-time she had
done nothing more than tear up half a dozen beginnings. After supper
David rattled the backgammon-board significantly.
"You are pretty slow, aren't you?" he asked, as she loitered about her
desk, instead of settling down to the usual business of the evening.
"Don't you think, just to-night, you would rather read a story?" she
pleaded.
"No, ma'am," said David, cheerfully.
So, sighing, she opened the board on her knees. David beat her to a
degree that made him very condescending, and also extremely displeased
by the interruption of a call from William King.