* * * * *
Mrs. Brandon also was in her bedroom. She was sitting on a high stiff-
backed chair, staring in front of her. She had been sitting there now for
a long time without making any movement at all. She might have been a dead
woman. Her thin hands, with the sharply marked blue veins, were clasped
tightly on her lap. She was feeding, feverishly, eagerly feeding upon the
thought of Morris.
She would see him that evening, they would talk together, dance together,
their hands would burn as they touched; they would say very little to one
another; they would long, agonize for one another, to be alone together,
to be far, far away from everybody, and they would be desperately unhappy.
She wondered, in her strange kind of mouse-in-the-trap trance, about that
unhappiness. Was there to be no happiness, for her anywhere? Was she
always to want more than she got, was all this passion now too late? Was
it real at all? Was it not a fever, a phantom, a hallucination? Did she
see Morris? Did she not rather see something that she must seize to slake
her burning feverish thirst? For one moment she had known happiness, when
her arms had gone around him and she had been able to console and comfort
him.
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