"When we are married," Dick answered with silly masculine
self-consciousness.
"And that is to be soon!"
"As soon as I can manage it. I can't bear to have Lena living as she
does now; and there's no reason why we shouldn't cut it short."
"No reason at all. I don't wonder you feel so. Good-by, both of you."
Dick saw her to the door and Madeline walked out with her usual
deliberate serenity.
She found her way home with bottled-up emotions, as a hurt child holds
in the cry until he gets to the spot where mother's breast waits for the
inarticulate sobs. Everything she had done and said seemed to have been
the act of some far-away self, that had hardly any connection with the
real Madeline. The earth danced around her and she was incapable of real
thought. And yet the well-trained, automatic body that was her outer
shell conducted itself with reason. It even stopped in the living-room
to kiss her mother; it apparently skimmed a new copy of Life; it
convoyed her slowly up stairs to her own room, where it shut and locked
her door. But here her real self resumed control, as she threw herself
into an easy chair by the window and stared out at the desolation of
December where dead leaves went whirling in elfin eddying clouds.
For a few moments she let the solar system rock and reel around her, and
watched everything she had thought stable go up in smoke. Then upon the
world, swirling and pounding meaninglessly, there came an intense quiet.
She knew that the outer world was as serene as ever; but a great
throbbing pain within showed her that it was only her own little atom of
self that was revolutionized. Nature was not upset. There was still
order for her to hold fast to. For the first time she began to analyze
herself and her emotions.
She could not say that she had planned her future, but it had seemed so
natural and inevitable that she had accepted it without planning, almost
without thought. Dick and she had belonged to each other ever since they
could remember. At ten they had been outspoken lovers, and ever since
there had been that intimate comradeship that seemed to her to imply the
unspoken relation, behind, above, below. All this she had taken for
granted, like mother-love and her own dawning womanhood. And now Dick,
the chief corner-stone of her edifice, was torn away, and the whole airy
structure toppled and dissolved.
"I've been assuming all this," she said to herself, "and marriage isn't
a thing to take for granted. Shouldn't I have resented it if Dick had
appropriated me as though I belonged to him and had lost my freedom of
choice? I've been unfair to him. And now--if I should never marry--there
are surely plenty of good things left in the world. But are there?"