THE REASON OF A WOMAN WHO HAD NO REASON


It was not a jest--Nancy's telling Aunt Bell that her reason for going
to Edom was too foolish to give even to herself. At least such reticence
to self is often sincerely and plausibly asserted by the very inner
woman. Yet no sooner had her train started than her secret within a
secret began to tell itself: at first in whispers, then low like a voice
overheard through leafy trees; then loud and louder until all the noise
of the train did no more than confuse the words so that only she could
hear them.

When the exciting time of this listening had gone and she stepped from
the train into the lazy spring silence of the village, her own heart
spelled the thing in quick, loud, hammering beats--a thing which, now
that she faced it, was so wildly impossible that her cheeks burned at
the first second of actual realisation of its enormity; and her knees
weakened in a deathly tremble, quite as if they might bend
embarrassingly in either direction.

Then in the outer spaces of her mind there grew, to save her, a sense of
her crass fatuity. She was quickly in a carriage, eager to avoid any
acquaintance, glad the driver was no village familiar who might amiably
seek to regale her with gossip. They went swiftly up the western road
through its greening elms to where Clytie kept the big house--her own
home while she lived, and the home of the family when they chose to go
there.

At last, the silent, cool house with its secretive green shutters rose