as the door closed behind their visitor agnes turned without speaking and went back to the front room where she sat at a little desk to write in a large black book. this was the last thing she did each day.
thane leaned against the door jamb looking at her back. it was the view of her that sometimes thrilled him most. it made him see her again as she was that first night, in the moonlight, sitting at the edge of the mountain path, mysteriously averse. approaching timidly he stood behind her chair, close enough to have touched her, as he longed to do if only he dared. he looked at his hands, turning them in the light; then at himself, downward, and was overcome with a sense of incongruity.
to him she was as untouchable as a butterfly. her way of dressing so elaborately was at once an insurmountable barrier and a maddening provocation. never did he see her in less formidable attire, not even at breakfast. her morning gowns were forbidding in quite another way. their effect was to put him on his sense of honor. if it should happen that he came home unexpectedly she was always in her room and when she appeared it was like this. embellishment was her armor. it was constant and never slipped. yet the need for it was only in those moments such as now when his feeling for her broke down his pride and[241] moved him toward her in spite of himself. this was not often. it had happened only a few times since the first night in the hotel, when after supper she met his impulse by looking at him with such scorn and anger, even horror, that his desire instantly collapsed and left him aching cold. his pride was as black a beast as hers.
for a long time after that they had no way with each other, almost no way of meeting each other’s eyes. then to his great surprise she offered truce, not in words but by implications of conduct. she became friendly and began to talk to him about himself, about his work and by degrees about themselves. it was she who proposed to take a house. she chose it, bought the things that went into it, ordered the pattern of their twain existence within its walls. he was for spending more money, telling her how much he made and how well they could afford having more. she was firm in her own way, asking him only if he were comfortable, and he was.
the only thing she would freely spend money for was clothes. he pondered this and found no clue to its meaning. they had no social life whatever. she never went out alone. twice in a year they had been to the play and nowhere else. except for the recurring frustrations of his impulse toward her, which left him each time worse mangled in his pride and filled with rage, shame and self-abomination, he was happy.
he had been standing there back of her chair for so long that he began to wonder if she was aware of his presence when she spoke abruptly.
[242]
“yes?” she said, in a quick, sharp tone.
he quailed, with the look of a man turned suddenly hollow. his pride saved him. without a word he turned and went upstairs. when his footsteps were near the top she called, “goodnight.” apparently he did not hear her. at least he did not answer. she went on writing.
the black book was the ledger of her spirit’s solvency. each night she wrote it up. there was first a record of all the money received from thane. then a record of all expenditures, under two heads,—money spent for household purposes, itemized, and money spent upon herself, for clothes, etc., unitemized. at the end of each month against her personal expenditures was entered,—“item, to agnes, for wages, $50.” if her personal expenditures exceeded her wage credit she wrote against the excess,—“balance owing alexander thane, to be accounted for.”
some day she would have a fortune of her own. then she would return everything she had spent above her wages. that was what the record said. anyone could see it at a glance. the book was always lying there on the desk. perhaps covertly she wished he would have the curiosity to look into it and see what she was doing. he never did and he never knew. she meant sometime to tell him. what was the point of not telling him? yet she didn’t, and the longer she put it off the more difficult it was, for a reason she was afraid to face. she would not face it for fear it was true. but even more she feared it might not be true.
[243]
so it appears that what went on in that house was as much an enigma to thane as to john; and nobody could answer john’s question,—“why does she do it?”—for agnes who knew concealed the truth from herself.
