Page:McClure's Magazine v9 n3 to v10 no2.djvu/443

Rh "Let us go," said Mrs. Dawson, turning a pale face to Darrach.

He made an appointment to meet the woman in town. Then they returned to the carriage. Looking back, they saw that she had reseated herself in the same listless attitude on the steps, her chin sunken in her hand, watching them with those dull, narrow eyes.

"SHE SEATED HERSELF AT THE BREAKFAST TABLE, AND OPENED THE MORNING PAPER,..."

Darrach sent the horses down the lane at a lively pace. Mrs. Dawson sat erect. Her face was pale and troubled.

"Well, that's awful, isn't it?" said Darrach, cheerfully. "It makes me suspect that this suffrage business isn't all it is represented to be."

"Oh, it is terrible," said Mrs. Dawson, earnestly. "That a woman should have such a feeling"—she pressed her hands together upon her knees—"I cannot help feeling sorry for her. She is wrong, all wrong, now; yet I think I understand what a miserable, starved life she has had. I believe that the hearts of millions of women would have leaped could they have heard those words: 'If he'd a half given me my rights before!' You men have been wrong; you have not been wise. You brought this revolution on your own heads. Why, what can one expect of the kind of man that woman's husband must be, when my own husband—a man of refinement and culture—treated me like a dependent in money matters?"

"The beast!" said Darrach. She turned a white, startled face upon him. "What?" she stammered.

He laughed instantly, although a thick color mounted into his face. "Oh, I didn't mean Dawson. I was still thinking of that woman's husband." But he was trembling under strength of the feeling he was endeavoring to control.

"We must hasten," said she, "or I shall be too late for the Salem train."

Once on the train, Mrs. Dawson had three hours of hard and bitter reflection. There are certain crises in the lives of all of us when a word, a look, a gesture, is sufficient to awaken us to a full realization of some wrong that we have been committing with shut eyes and dulled conscience. Mrs. Dawson had reached the crisis in her life. Her awakening was sudden and complete; but it was crushing.

She sat with her burning cheek in her hand, looking out the window. She saw nothing—neither wide green fields, nor peaceful village, nor silver, winding river. The events of the past two years were marching, panorama-wise, before her aching eyes. Her heart beat painfully under its burden of self-accusation. Oh, blind, foolish, wicked!

She did not care for Darrach. He was an attentive, congenial companion; that was all. But how wrong, how loathsome, now seemed her association with him!

She felt a great choke coming into her throat. She detested her campaign, woman suffrage, and, most of all, herself as she had been in these two years.

Suddenly she sat erect. "I will give it all up," she said. "I will go back to my husband and my children, from whom I