Page:Possession (1926).pdf/375

 Like Hattie, like Thérèse, like a million other women she was helpless, and the feeling terrified her, who had never been really helpless before. This war, which she had damned for a nuisance that interrupted her own triumphant way, became a monster, overwhelming and bestial, before which she was powerless. And in her terror she was softened by a new sort of humanity. She became merely a woman whose men were at war, a woman who could do nothing, who must sit behind and suffer in terror and in doubt.

Rebecca found her there when she returned at three o'clock, still pacing up and down, up and down, the great black dog following close at her heels. She had not lunched; she had not thought of eating.

"The letter from Lily," she told Rebecca, with an air of repression, "has upset me. I don't know what I'm to do. I want to go back to Paris."

The statement so astounded Rebecca that she dropped the novels and papers she was carrying and stood staring.

"What!" she cried, "Go back now? Sacrifice everything we have worked for? Ruin everything? Give up all these engagements? You must be mad."

It was plain that Ellen had thought of all this, that the struggle which she saw taking form with Rebecca had already occurred in her own soul. She knew what she was sacrificing. . . if she returned.

"Lily is alone there, and in trouble. Some one should go to her."

So that was it! Rebecca's tiny, bright ferret's eyes grew red with anger. "Lily! Lily!" she said. "Don't worry about Lily. I'll wager by this time she has found some one to console her."

Ellen moved toward her like a thunder cloud, powerful, menacing in a kind of dignity that was strange and even terrifying to Rebecca. "You can't say that of her. I won't have you. How can you when it was Lily who has helped me more than