Page:Possession (1926).pdf/81

 it had begun already to leave its mark in the fine lines about her eyes and at the corners of her mouth. It was at times like this that her heart ceased all at once to beat and a coldness swept through her body; for love with her was really an intense and physical thing.

On the sofa her husband slept peacefully, quieted at last by the Liebestraum; and again she resented his indifference, all his willingness to accept life, his refusal to struggle against fate. "Things come out right in the end," he always said when she assailed him. "There is no use in struggling."

Ah, she thought bitterly, but there is use in struggling. There is a satisfaction to the spirit. But this, of course, her husband could never have known.

"Ellen," she murmured, "Ellen." And the girl raised her head with a look in her eyes so terrible that it appalled her mother. "Are you tired?"

"No."

Again a little pause. "Why are you unhappy?"

For an instant the face of the girl softened. There were signs of a sudden collapse, of sobbing, of yielding utterly. Perhaps if it had come in that moment—a sudden abrupt bursting of all restraint—the lives of all the people in that warm and comfortable room would have been changed. But it did not come, for one so young does not yield so easily. The girl sighed, stiffened her body and sat upright.

"I don't know," she answered dully. And yet she lied, because she did know, perfectly. In that moment life for her was an awful thing, baffling, suffocating, overwhelming. It was impossible to say so, because her mother would not have understood. It would have been the same as when Mrs. Tolliver said, "It is beautiful, your music . . . lovely," when she did not understand it at all, when she said such things simply because she loved her daughter and was proud of her cleverness. 