Nancy fled to her own room, and sat on the edge of her bed, frightened and subdued.  That quarrel and its serious effect made a turning-point in her life, though she attached no blame to herself for the man’s illness.  She had no love for him, but her heart was not callous to suffering, and his distorted and agonized face had terrified and shocked her.

The suddenness of the seizure made his words more impressive.  Suppose he died:  what of her?  She was not sure that any definite provision had as yet been made for her.  What, then, should she do?

Suppose he recovered:  what then?  She had cause for serious thought.  All this luxury and ease, this pleasant life of plenty, in which she reveled with the deep delight of one quite unused to it, hung upon a contingency—­the contingency of absolute obedience.  She was not naturally supine, and her spirit rose against an unconditional self-surrender to a hot-tempered, imperious old man, who would mold her to his will, make her over to his own notions, quite as high-handedly as if she’d been a lump of putty and not a human being.  Nancy tasted the bitterness of having no voice in the making of her own destiny.

Well, but suppose she defied him?  He was quite capable of washing his hands of her, just as he had threatened.  And then?  Before that possibility Nancy recoiled.  No.  She couldn’t, she wouldn’t go back to that old life of squalid slavery—­eating bad food, wearing wretched clothes, suffering all the sodden and sordid misery of the ignorant, abjectly poor, a suffering twice as poignant now that she knew better things.  She knew poverty too well to have any illusions about it.  The Baxter kitchen rose before her.  Why! while she was sitting here now, in this luxurious room, back there they’d be getting ready for the noonday dinner.  The close kitchen would be reeking with the odor of boiling potatoes and cabbage, from which a greasy steam would be arising, so that one saw things as through a hot mist.  One of the children would be screaming, somewhere about the house, and Mrs. Baxter, in an unsavory wrapper, her face streaming with perspiration, her hair in sticky strands on her hot forehead, would be shrilly threatening personal chastisement:  “You shut up, out there!  Just you wait till I get this batch o’ biscuits off my hands an’ I bet I fix you! didn’t I say shut up?” The hateful voice seemed so close to Nancy’s ear that the girl shrank back, shivering with distaste.

She fingered the soft, fine stuff of the frock she was wearing.  She stared about the room,—­her room, which she didn’t have to share with one of the Baxter children, who squirmed and kicked all night in summer, and pulled the bed-coverings off her in winter.  She went over to her dressing-table and fingered its pretty accessories, sniffing with childish pleasure the delicately scented powder and cologne.  She looked at her reflection in the mirror, and scowled.  Then she began to walk restlessly up and down the room.  She had to think this thing out.