go.”
{121}
“Go?” Delia gasped.
“Yes. Don’t think me ungrateful. You saved my child once—do you suppose I can forget? But now it’s my turn—it’s I who must save her. And it’s only by taking her away from everything here—from everything she’s known till now—that I can do it. She’s lived too long among unrealities: and she’s like me. They won’t content her.”
“Unrealities?” Delia echoed vaguely.
“Unrealities for her. Young men who make love to her and can’t marry her. Happy households where she’s welcomed till she’s suspected of designs on a brother or a husband—or else exposed to their insults. How could we ever have imagined, either of us, that the child could escape disaster? I thought only of her present{122} happiness—of all the advantages, for both of us, of being with you. But this affair with young Halsey has opened my eyes. I must take Tina away. We must go and live somewhere where we’re not known, where we shall be among plain people, leading plain lives. Somewhere where she can find a husband, and make herself a home.”
{122}
Charlotte paused. She had spoken in a rapid monotonous tone, as if by rote; but now her voice broke and she repeated painfully: “I’m not ungrateful.”
“Oh, don’t let’s speak of gratitude! What place has it between you and me?”
Delia had risen and begun to move uneasily about the room. She longed to plead with Charlotte, to implore her not to be in haste, to picture to her the cruelty of severing Tina from all her habits and associations, of carrying her inexplicably{123} away to lead “a plain life among plain people.” What chance was there, indeed, that a creature so radiant would tamely submit to such a fate, or find an acceptable husband in such conditions? The change might only precipitate a tragedy. Delia’s experience was too limited for her to picture exactly what might happen to a girl like Tina, suddenly cut off from all that sweetened life for her; but vague visions of revolt and flight—of a “fall” deeper and more irretrievable than Charlotte’s—flashed through her agonized imagination.
{123}
“It’s too cruel—it’s too cruel,” she cried, speaking to herself rather than to Charlotte.
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