She tried to raise her head, but the weight of her despair
bowed it down. She said to herself: "This is the end...he
won't try to appeal to me again..." and she remained in a
sort of tranced rigidity, perceiving without feeling the
fateful lapse of the seconds. Then the cords that bound her
seemed to snap, and she lifted her head and saw him going.
"Why, he's mine--he's mine! He's no one else's!" His face
was turned to her and the look in his eyes swept away all
her terrors. She no longer understood what had prompted her
senseless outcry; and the mortal sweetness of loving him
became again the one real fact in the world.
XXXIX
Anna, the next day, woke to a humiliated memory of the
previous evening.
Darrow had been right in saying that their sacrifice would
benefit no one; yet she seemed dimly to discern that there
were obligations not to be tested by that standard. She
owed it, at any rate, as much to his pride as to hers to
abstain from the repetition of such scenes; and she had
learned that it was beyond her power to do so while they
were together. Yet when he had given her the chance to free
herself, everything had vanished from her mind but the blind
fear of losing him; and she saw that he and she were as
profoundly and inextricably bound together as two trees with
interwoven roots.
For a long time she brooded on her plight, vaguely conscious
that the only escape from it must come from some external
chance.
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