She had spent her poetry and romance on
their short courting: the function was exhausted
because the need was past. Now she was simply ripening
into a copy of her mother, and mysteriously, by the
very process, trying to turn him into a Mr. Welland.
He laid down his book and stood up impatiently; and
at once she raised her head.
"What's the matter?"
"The room is stifling: I want a little air."
He had insisted that the library curtains should draw
backward and forward on a rod, so that they might be
closed in the evening, instead of remaining nailed to a
gilt cornice, and immovably looped up over layers of
lace, as in the drawing-room; and he pulled them back
and pushed up the sash, leaning out into the icy night.
The mere fact of not looking at May, seated beside his
table, under his lamp, the fact of seeing other houses,
roofs, chimneys, of getting the sense of other lives
outside his own, other cities beyond New York, and a
whole world beyond his world, cleared his brain and
made it easier to breathe.
After he had leaned out into the darkness for a few
minutes he heard her say: "Newland! Do shut the
window. You'll catch your death."
He pulled the sash down and turned back. "Catch
my death!" he echoed; and he felt like adding: "But
I've caught it already. I AM dead--I've been dead for
months and months."
And suddenly the play of the word flashed up a wild
suggestion. What if it were SHE who was dead! If she
were going to die--to die soon--and leave him free!
The sensation of standing there, in that warm familiar
room, and looking at her, and wishing her dead, was
so strange, so fascinating and overmastering, that its
enormity did not immediately strike him.
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