d
happened was inevitable, that she and Darrow belonged to each other, and
that he was right in saying no past folly could ever put them asunder.
If there was a shade of difference in her feeling for him it was that
of an added intensity. She felt restless, insecure out of his sight:
she had a sense of incompleteness, of passionate dependence, that was
somehow at variance with her own conception of her character.

It was partly the consciousness of this change in herself that made her
want to be alone. The solitude of her inner life had given her the habit
of these hours of self-examination, and she needed them as she needed
her morning plunge into cold water.

During the journey she tried to review what had happened in the light
of her new decision and of her sudden relief from pain. She seemed to
herself to have passed through some fiery initiation from which she
had emerged seared and quivering, but clutching to her breast a magic
talisman. Sophy Viner had cried out to her: "Some day you'll know!" and
Darrow had used the same words. They meant, she supposed, that when
she had explored the intricacies and darknesses of her own heart her
judgment of others would be less absolute. Well, she knew now--knew
weaknesses and strengths she had not dreamed of, and the deep discord
and still deeper complicities between what thought in her and what
blindly wanted...

Her mind turned anxiously to Owen. At least the blow that was to fall on
him would not seem to have been inflicted by her hand. He would be left
with the impression that his breach with Sophy Viner was due to one of
the ordinary causes of such disruptions: though he must lose her, his
memory of her would not be poisoned. Anna never for a moment permitted
herself the delusion that she had renewed her promise to Darrow in order
to spare her step-son this last refinement of misery. She knew she had
been prompted by the irresistible impulse to hold fast to what was
most precious to her, and that Owen's arrival on the scene had been
the pretext for her decision, and not its cause; yet she felt herself
fortified by the thought of what she had spared him. It was as though
a star she had been used to follow had shed its familiar ray on ways
unknown to her.

All through these meditations ran the undercurrent of an absolute trust
in Sophy Viner. She thought of the girl with a mingling of antipathy
and confidence. It was humiliating to her pride to recognize kindred
impul