Once in her room, she did not go to bed, but sat down by the window and looked out at the dim campus. Her pain, dulled for a few moments, returned. He was going away, she should not see him! She put her hand to her side, to soothe actual, physical distress.
Presently, as if to ascertain whether this agony had put a visible mark upon her, she turned on the light and examined herself in her mirror curiously and with humility. She was not thinking of her appearance; she was asking herself a question. Then she lifted her head with a splendid defiance to resist the fire of amazement and resentment which ran through her. The resentment was not against Stephen, still less was it against herself; it was against life.
"I haven't done any wrong," said Ellen aloud. "It isn't my fault."
At once, moving deliberately, she undressed. She counted the strokes of the brush on her thick hair, she hung up her clothes with painstaking, she laid out fresh clothes for the next morning. But once in bed, she could not sleep; a faint recollection disturbed her, a vague incident connected with this hour, promising in the most tantalizing way an interpretation if she could but read it aright.
Later in the night she dreamed. She seemed to see Millie, a little, weazened creature who pointed at her and chattered, rat-like, about the pursuit of Brother Reith and the unlawful pleasures which he allowed himself in the absence of his wife.
During the long hours in which Grandfather waited for Amos, he reviewed his life, searching like Job to find where he had erred and how he had brought upon himself the heavy punishments of his old age. He had tried to do his duty, had preached righteousness, had tried to interpret the Bible correctly, had given to the poor. He had married, but the instinct to mate had been implanted in the human heart by God Himself. Except in this one act, his whole life had been one of self-denial.
In spite of his effort to be righteous, his life had followed a descending scale since his thirtieth year. Then his wife had died, and about the same time three families had left the church, two to become Lutherans, the other to go to church no more. They had all been rich in this world's goods, and what was far more important, they had been large families.