How should they
presume to tell that woman's story, knowing her only through one morbid
chapter of her earliest youth, which they had stumbled upon without the key
to it, or any knowledge of its sequel? She longed to feel that they might
be merciful and not tell it. She coveted happiness for her son, and in her
heart was prepared for almost any surrender that would purchase it for him.
If the lure were not so great! If the woman were not so blinding fair, why,
then one might find a virtue in excusing her, in condoning her silence,
even. But, clothed in that power, to have pretended innocence as well!
The roar of the stamp-heads deadened her hearing of the night's subtler
noises. Her thoughts went grinding on, crushing the hard rock of
circumstance, but incapable of picking out the grains of gold therein.
Later siftings might discover them, but she was reasoning now under too
great human pressure for delicate analysis.
She saw the planets set and the night-mist cloak the valley. By four
o'clock daybreak had put out the stars. She went to her room then and
fell asleep, awakening after the heat had begun, when the house was again
darkened for the day's siege.
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