it up and setting it upon her head. The act was her defiance. She was
determined. As one deaf and blind, she went out of the kitchen, and to
the hall-stand, fumbling there for her hatpins. She pinned her hat as
deliberately as she might have done in leaving the house any morning.
Her pale face was set. She had flung the gage. There remained only the
acts consequential. And of those, since they lay behind the veil of
night, who could now speak? Not Jenny!


iv

There was still Pa. He was there like a secret, lying snug in his warm
bed, drowsily coaxing sleep while Jenny planned a desertion. Even when
she was in the room, her chin grimly set and her lips quivering, a
shudder seemed to still her heart. She was afraid. She could not forget
him. He lay there so quiet in the semi-darkness, a long mound under the
bedclothes; and she was almost terrified at speaking to him because her
imagination was heightened by the sight of his dim outline. He was so
helpless! Ah, if there had only been two Jennies, one to go, one to
stay. The force of uncontrollable desire grappled with her pity. She
still argued within herself, a weary echo of her earlier struggle. He
would need nothing, she was sure. It would be for such a short time that
she left him. He would hardly know she was not there. He would think she
was in the kitchen. But if he needed her? If he called, if he knocked
with his stick, and she did not come, he might be alarmed, or stubborn,
and might try to find his way through the passage to the kitchen. If he
fell! Her flesh crept as she imagined him helpless upon the floor,
feebly struggling to rise.... It was of no use. She was bound to tell
him....