Washington Square

“If I am prevented from coming to-morrow, you will say I have deceived you!” he said.

“How can you be prevented?  You can come if you will.”

“I am a busy man—I am not a dangler!” cried Morris sternly.

His voice was so hard and unnatural that, with a helpless look at him, she turned away; and then he quickly laid his hand on the door-knob.  He felt as if he were absolutely running away from her.  But in an instant she was close to him again, and murmuring in a tone none the less penetrating for being low, “Morris, you are going to leave me.”

“Yes, for a little while.”

“For how long?”

“Till you are reasonable again.”

“I shall never be reasonable in that way!”  And she tried to keep him longer; it was almost a struggle.  “Think of what I have done!” she broke out.  “Morris, I have given up everything!”

“You shall have everything back!”

“You wouldn’t say that if you didn’t mean something.  What is it?—what has happened?—what have I done?—what has changed you?”

“I will write to you—that is better,” Morris stammered.

“Ah, you won’t come back!” she cried, bursting into tears.

“Dear Catherine,” he said, “don’t believe that I promise you that you shall see me again!”  And he managed to get away and to close the door behind him.

XXX

It was almost her last outbreak of passive grief; at least, she never indulged in another that the world knew anything about.  But this one was long and terrible; she flung herself on the sofa and gave herself up to her misery.  She hardly knew what had happened; ostensibly she had only had a difference with her lover, as other girls had had before, and the thing was not only not a rupture, but she was under no obligation to regard it even as a menace.  Nevertheless, she felt a wound, even if he had not dealt it; it seemed to her that a mask had suddenly fallen from his face.  He had wished to get away from her; he had been angry and cruel, and said strange things, with strange looks.  She was smothered and stunned; she buried her head in the cushions, sobbing and talking to herself.  But at last she raised herself, with the fear that either her father or Mrs. Penniman would come in; and then she sat there, staring before her, while the room grew darker.  She said to herself that perhaps he would come back to tell her he had not meant what he said; and she listened for his ring at the door, trying to believe that this was probable.  A long time passed, but Morris remained absent; the shadows gathered; the evening settled down on the meagre elegance of the light, clear-coloured room; the fire went out.  When it had grown dark, Catherine went to the window and looked out; she stood there for half an hour, on the mere chance that he would come up the steps.  At last she turned away, for she saw her father come in.  He had seen her at the window looking out, and he stopped a moment at the bottom of the white steps, and gravely, with an air of exaggerated courtesy, lifted his hat to her.  The gesture was so incongruous to the condition she was in, this stately tribute of respect to a poor girl despised and forsaken was so out of place, that the thing gave her a kind of horror, and she hurried away to her room.  It seemed to her that she had given Morris up.

She had to show herself half an hour later, and she was sustained at table by the immensity of her desire that her father should not perceive that anything had happened.  This was a great help to her afterwards, and it served her (though never as much as she supposed) from the first.  On this occasion Dr. Sloper was rather talkative.  He told a great many stories about a wonderful poodle that he had seen at the house of an old lady whom he visited professionally.  Catherine not only tried to appear to listen to the anecdotes of the poodle, but she endeavoured to interest herself in them, so as not to think of her scene with Morris.  That perhaps was an hallucination; he was mistaken, she was jealous; people didn’t change like that from one day to another.  Then she knew that she had had doubts before—strange suspicions, that were at once vague and acute—and that he had been different ever since her return from Europe: whereupon she tried again to listen to her father, who told a story so remarkably well.  Afterwards she went straight to her own room; it was beyond her strength to undertake to spend the evening with her aunt.  All the evening, alone, she questioned herself.  Her trouble was terrible; but was it a thing of her imagination, engendered by an extravagant sensibility, or did it represent a clear-cut reality, and had the worst that was possible actually come to pass?  Mrs. Penniman, with a degree of tact that was as unusual as it was commendable, took the line of leaving her alone.  The truth is, that her suspicions having been aroused, she indulged a desire, natural to a timid person, that the explosion should be localised.  So long as the air still vibrated she kept out of the way.