She closed her eyes with weariness, and pressed her hands to her temples.
She wondered why she could not be all evil or all good. She spoke and
acted against Ruth Devlin, and yet she pitied her. She had the nettle to
sting Roscoe to death, and yet she hesitated to use it. She had said to
herself that she would wait till the happiest moment of his life, and
then do so. Well, his happiest moment had come. Ruth Devlin's heart was
all out, all blossomed--beside Mrs. Falchion's like some wild flower to
the aloe. . . . Only now she had come to know that she had a heart.
Something had chilled her at her birth, and when her mother died, a
stranger's kiss closed up all the ways to love, and left her an icicle.
She was twenty-eight years old, and yet she had never kissed a face in
joy or to give joy. And now, when she had come to know herself, and
understand what others understand when they are little children in their
mother's arms, she had to bow to the spirit that denies. She drew herself
up with a quiver of the body.
"O God!" she said, "do I hate him or love him!" Her head dropped in her
hands.
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