“Because he loved you!” Charlotte Lovell stammered out; and the two women stood and faced each other.
Slowly the tears rose to Delia’s eyes and rolled down her cheeks, moistening her parched lips. Through the tears she saw her cousin’s haggard countenance waver and droop like a drowning face under water. Things half-guessed, obscurely felt, surged up from unsuspected depths in her. It was almost as if, for a moment, this other woman were telling her of her own secret past, putting into crude words all the trembling silences of her own heart.
The worst of it was, as Charlotte said, that they must act now; there was not a day to lose. Chatty was right—it was{44} impossible that she should marry Joe if to do so meant giving up the child. But, in any case, how could she marry him without telling him the truth? And was it conceivable that, after hearing it, he should not repudiate her? All these questions spun agonizingly through Delia’s brain, and through them glimmered the persistent vision of the child—Clem Spender’s child—growing up on charity in a negro hovel, or herded in one of the plague-houses they called Asylums. No: the child came first—she felt it in every fibre of her body. But what should she do, of whom take counsel, how advise the wretched creature who had come to her in Clement’s name? Delia glanced about her desperately, and then turned back to her cousin.
{44}
“You must give me time. I must think.{45} You ought not to marry him—and yet all the arrangements are made; and the wedding-presents.... There would be a scandal ... it would kill Granny Lovell....”
{45}
Charlotte answered in a low voice: “There is no time. I must decide now.”
Delia pressed her hands against her breast. “I tell you I must think. I wish you would go home.—Or, no: stay here: your mother mustn’t see your eyes. Jim’s not coming home till late; you can wait in this room till I come back.” She had opened the wardrobe and was reaching up for a plain bonnet and heavy veil.
“Stay here? But where are you going?”
“I don’t know. I want to walk—to get the air. I think I want to be alone.” Feverishly, Delia unfolded her Paisley shawl, tied on bonnet and veil, thrust her{46} mittened hands into her muff. Charlotte, without moving, stared at her dumbly from the sofa.
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