Charlotte’s stony face broke up in weeping. “It’s for my baby ... my baby....”
Delia did not heed her. “How can I help you if I don’t know?” she insisted in a harsh dry voice: her heart-beats were so violent that they seemed to send up throttling hands to her throat.
Charlotte made no answer.
“Come back from where?” Delia doggedly repeated; and at that, with a long wail, the girl flung her hands up, screening her eyes. “He always thought you’d wait for him,” she sobbed out, “and then, when he found {41}you hadn’t ... and that you were marrying Jim.... He heard it just as he was sailing.... He didn’t know it till Mrs. Mingott asked him to bring the clock back for your wedding....”
{41}
“Stop—stop,” Delia cried, springing to her feet. She had provoked the avowal, and now that it had come she felt that it had been gratuitously and indecently thrust upon her. Was this New York, her New York, her safe friendly hypocritical New York, was this James Ralston’s house, and this his wife listening to such revelations of dishonour?
Charlotte Lovell stood up in her turn. “I knew it—I knew it! You think worse of my baby now, instead of better.... Oh, why did you make me tell you? I knew you’d never understand. I’d always cared for him, ever since I came out; that was why I wouldn’t marry any one else. {42}But I knew there was no hope for me ... he never looked at anybody but you. And then, when he came back four years ago, and there was no you for him any more, he began to notice me, to be kind, to talk to me about his life and his painting....” She drew a deep breath, and her voice cleared. “That’s over—all over. It’s as if I couldn’t either hate him or love him. There’s only the child now—my child. He doesn’t even know of it—why should he? It’s none of his business; it’s nobody’s business but mine. But surely you must see that I can’t give up my baby.”
{42}
Delia Ralston stood speechless, looking away from her cousin in a growing horror. She had lost all sense of reality, all feeling of safety and self-reliance. Her impulse was to close her ears to the other’s appeal as a child buries its head from midnight terrors. At last she drew herself up, and spoke with dry lips.{43}
{43}
“But what do you mean to do? Why have you come to me? Why have you told me all this?”
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