It relieved her to have thought that phase out, and she put it aside.
But the other? Must she give him up? What pleasure could she find in
sitting here with him if her mother's apprehensive mind did not leave
the room for a moment? What pleasure if a vulgar world were
whispering? She reflected with some bitterness that one danger was
receding. He had not entered this room since the day of her return.
Although he had called several times, he had come in the evening, when
she always sat with her mother, or in the morning, when Mrs. Madison
again was sure to be present. She knew that he dared not come here,
and that it was more than likely he never would call at the old hour
again.

She realized these two facts suddenly and vividly; her mind worked
with a brutal frankness at times. She began to cry heavily, the tears
raining on her intellectual mood and obliterating it. If she were not
to see him alone again, she might as well ask him to come to the house
on Thursday evenings only, and to show her no attention in public; if
she could not have the old hours again, she wanted nothing less. And
she wanted them passionately; those hours came back to her with a
poignancy of happiness in memory that the present had not revealed,
and the thought that they had gone for ever filled her with a
suffocating anguish that was as complete as it was sudden. She
implored him under her breath to come to her, then prayed that he
would not....

She became conscious that she was in a mood to take any step, were he
here, rather than lose him; and the mood terrified her. Would the time
come when this intolerable pain would kill every inheritance in her
brain, its empire the more absolute because it made passion itself