Chapter XXVII

Ellen’s first impulse, when she really began to love Robert Lloyd, was not yielding, but flight; her first sensation, not happiness, but shame.  When he left her that night she realized, to her unspeakable dismay and anger, that he had not left her, that he would never in her whole life, or at least it seemed so, leave her again.  Everywhere she looked she saw his face projected by her memory before her with all the reality of life.  His face came between her and her mother’s and father’s, it came between her and her thoughts of other faces.  When she was alone in her chamber, there was the face.  She blew out the lamp in a panic of resentment and undressed in the dark, but that made no difference.  When she lay in bed, although she closed her eyes resolutely, she could still see it.

“I won’t have it; I won’t have it,” she said, quite aloud in her shame and rebellion.  “I won’t have it.  What does this mean?”

In spite of herself the sound of his voice was in her ears, and she resented that; she fought against the feeling of utter rapture which came stealing over her because of it.  She felt as if she wanted to spring out of bed and run, run far away into the freedom of the night, if only by so doing she could outspeed herself.  Ellen began to realize the tyranny of her own nature, and her whole soul arose in revolt.

But the girl could no more escape than a nymph of old the pursuit of the god, and there was no friendly deity to transform her into a flower to elude him.  When she slept at last she was overtaken in the innocent passion of dreams, and when she awoke it was, to her angry sensitiveness, not alone.

When she went down-stairs all her rosy radiance of the night before was eclipsed.  She looked pale and nervous.  She recoiled whenever her mother began to speak.  It seemed to her that if she said anything, and especially anything congratulatory about Robert Lloyd, she would fly at her like a wild thing.  Fanny kept looking at her with loving facetiousness, and Ellen winced indescribably; still, she did not say anything until after breakfast, when Andrew had gone to work.  Andrew was unusually sober and preoccupied that morning.  When he went out he passed close to Ellen, as she sat at the table, and tilted up her face and kissed her.  “Father’s blessin’,” he whispered, hoarsely, in her ear.  Ellen nestled against him.  This natural affection, before which she need not fly nor be ashamed, which she had always known, seemed to come before her like a shield against all untried passion.  She felt sheltered and comforted.  But Andrew passed Eva Tenny coming to the house on his way out of the yard, and when she entered Fanny began at once: 

“Who do you s’pose came home with Ellen last night?” said she.  She looked at Eva, then at Ellen, with a glance which seemed to uncover a raw surface of delicacy.  Ellen flushed angrily.