Page:The Strange Case of Miss Annie Spragg (1928).djvu/108

 There was a light in her eye. At last the suppressed hatred of twenty years was satisfied. She had told Aunt Henrietta what she thought of her. The feeling was like a fresh cool breeze. It was all over. She was free. . . free with one hundred and thirty-two lira in the world, the savings of twenty years of slavery. Free, and there was nothing she could do, not even sew properly. But she was free. She could scrub floors. She was free.

In all the confusion the sprig of jasmine had come loose from her hair and had fallen into the V that revealed her plump white throat. She took it out and laid it on the table. Then when she had grown more calm, she regarded herself in the ancient mirror and fell to trying new ways of doing her hair. She couldn't go out into the world dressed in the ridiculous fashion that she had always commanded. Her hands trembled. She was afraid of herself and of this madness which had swept her without any effort of will into revolt. This was a strange woman who looked out of the mirror at her. Who was she? This creature born of the fires of hatred.

Then she let her hair fall down. It reached to her waist. Her hair, she told herself, had always been her great beauty even as a girl. She could not cut it.

Presently she rose feeling weak and shaken, and after drinking half a bottle of Fiuzzi water, went to the window for air. Far down below in the valley she could see a tiny light moving through the olive trees toward the stalled motor. Presently it reached the road, the lights of the motor flared up.