PART IV

RECONCILIATION

CHAPTER I

THE SECRET CHAMBERS

Waking in the night, with a start, Laura asked herself why she had burned the letter.  As she lay there in the darkness it seemed to her that the sudden light shone in her thoughts again, and she saw everything made clear to her as she had seen it while she held Jennie Alta’s hand.  In that instant she had looked beyond the small personal emotions to the woman’s soul with its burden of greed and sensuality, and because she had been able to do this, she had felt herself to be composed and released from hatred.  To discern the soul was to feel not only tolerance, but pity for the flesh, and it appeared to her now that in that one moment she had ceased to be herself alone, and had shared in the divine wisdom which the sudden light had revealed to her in her breast.  Yet the instant afterward her personality had triumphed and she had burned the letter!

The illumination within her faded now, and as she lay there with wide open eyes, she saw only the surrounding darkness.  Her own motives were still vague to her; when she tried to remember the prompting of her thoughts she could recall only a physical pain which had entered her bosom while she looked at the large white envelope upon the blotter.  “Before this I had never lied in my life,” she said, “I had never been capable of the slightest dishonest act, I had even taken a pride in my truth like the pride some women take in beauty—­and yet I did this thing without effort and I do not know now why I did, nor what I thought of at the time, nor whether I regretted it the moment afterward.”

With a resolution which had seldom failed her, she attempted to banish the recollection from her mind; and turning her face from the pale darkness of the window, she closed her eyes again and lay breathing quietly.  “Why should I worry—­it will all come right—­everything will come right if I have patience,” she thought, trying to persuade herself to sleep.

But she had no sooner shut her eyes than she began to live over again the afternoon in Kemper’s room; and her heart beat so high that she heard the muffled sound under the coverlet “Why did Gerty look at me so?” she asked.  “Did she really look at me as if she were afraid, or was it only my imagination?” From Gerty her excited thoughts flew back to Kemper and it seemed to her that she had read scorn and suspicion in the beaming glance he had thrown upon her—­in the breathless apology of his entrance.  “Had he met her downstairs?  Did he know all the time? and was he only waiting for Gerty’s absence to accuse me face to face of my dishonesty?  But it was a very little thing,” she argued aloud, as if justifying herself to a presence beside her bed, “it was such a little thing that it had almost escaped my memory.”  Then, as she uttered the words,