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Page 22
She felt better after that. She had not gone to sleep now for many a
night unkissed; it had seemed hard at first.
When she had gone half-way up stairs, Dick came to the door of his room
on the first floor, and called her. He held the little kerosene lamp
over his head; his face was grave and pale.
"I haven't said good night, Sene."
She made no reply.
"Asenath, good night."
She stayed her steps upon the stairs without turning her head. Her
father had kissed her to-night. Was not that enough?
"Why, Sene, what's the matter with you?"
Dick mounted the stairs, and touched his lips to her forehead with a
gently compassionate smile.
She fled from him with a cry like the cry of a suffocated creature, shut
her door, and locked it with a ringing clang.
"She's walked too far, and got a little nervous," said Dick, screwing up
his lamp; "poor thing!"
Then he went into his room to look at Del's photograph awhile before he
burned it up; for he meant to burn it up.
Asenath, when she had locked her door, put her lamp before the
looking-glass and tore off her gray cape; tore it off so savagely that
the button snapped and rolled away,--two little crystal semicircles like
tears upon the floor.
There was no collar about the neck of her dress, and this heightened the
plainness and the pallor of her face. She shrank instinctively at the
first sight of herself, and opened the drawer where the crimson cape was
folded, but shut it resolutely.
"I'll see the worst of it," she said with pinched lips. She turned
herself about and about before the glass, letting the cruel light gloat,
over her shoulders, letting the sickly shadows grow purple on her face.
Then she put her elbows on the table and her chin into her hands, and
so, for a motionless half-hour, studied the unrounded, uncolored,
unlightened face that stared back at her; her eyes darkening at its
eyes, her hair touching its hair, her breath dimming the outline of its
repulsive mouth.
By and by she dropped her head into her hands. The poor, mistaken face!
She felt as if she would like to blot it out of the world, as her tears
used to blot out the wrong sums upon her slate. It had been so happy!
But he was sorry for it, and all that. Why did a good God make such
faces?
She slipped upon her knees, bewildered.
"He _can't_ mean any harm nohow," she said, speaking fast, and knelt
there and said it over till she felt sure of it.
Then she thought of Del once more,--of her colors and sinuous springs,
and little cries and chatter.
After a time she found that she was growing faint, and so stole down
into the kitchen for some food. She stayed a minute to warm her feet.
The fire was red and the clock was ticking. It seemed to her home-like
and comfortable, and she seemed to herself very homeless and lonely; so
she sat down on the floor, with her head in a chair, and cried as hard
as she ought to have done four hours ago.
She climbed into bed about one o'clock, having decided, in a dull way,
to give Dick up to-morrow.
But when to-morrow came he was up with a bright face, and built the
kitchen fire for her, and brought in all the water, and helped her fry
the potatoes, and whistled a little about the house, and worried at her
paleness, and so she said nothing about it.
"I'll wait till night," she planned, making ready for the mill.
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