Page:Steadfast Heart.djvu/234

 “I’ll marry him if I want to,” she cried. “I’ll marry him if I want to…. I don’t care—who he is—or what—he does…. I’d marry him in a prison cell if I wanted him.”

Though she was a young woman of dignified years and marriageable age, she turned swiftly, gathered up her skirts, and ran toward home as fast as she could fly, sobbing as she went. Malcolm stood dumbly, staring after her.

Lydia ran until her strength deserted her midway up the hill. There she stopped an instant, dabbed her eyes with her handkerchief, and continued at a more decorous pace. Home appeared to her a harbor of refuge. There she could hide, there she could steal away to her own room, lock the door and shut out all the world…. Not stopping to remove her hat, she threw herself on the bed and ground her face into the coverlet—ground it so there was actual pain…. It was welcome pain.

When your ordinary girl first realizes the possibility, the possible imminence, of giving herself into the keeping of a definite man, she does so with pleasure. There may be trepidation, conventional fears, tremblings, but there is also joy…. Lydia Canfield felt only a numbing horror….

She did not search her heart to discover if she loved Angus Burke. For the time that aspect