Outside in the backyard, the flowering ailantus tree
shed a disagreeable odour; downstairs the feeble crying, which had
stopped for a little while, was beginning again. While she remained
motionless at the foot of the bed, wild and rebellious thoughts flocked
through Corinna's mind. If she had only held back that message! If she
had only kept Patty away until it was too late! She thought of the girl
a few hours ago, flushed with happiness, dancing under the swinging
garlands of flowers, to the sound of that thunderous music. Dancing
there, with the restless pleasure of youth, while in another street, so
far away that it might have been in a distant city, in a different
world even, this woman, with the face of tragedy, lay dying with that
fretful wail in her ears. A different world it might have been, and yet
what divided her from this other woman except the blind decision of
chance, the difference between beauty and ugliness, nothing more. In
this dingy room, smelling of dust and drugs and the heavy odour of the
ailantus tree, she felt a presence more profoundly real, more poignantly
significant, than any material forms--the presence of those elemental
forces which connect time with eternity.
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