Her voice had mounted steadily and, at the last, she rose to her feet, bending over the bewildered Ann and gesturing heavily with her right arm while the other was pressed tightly across her chest.
"That's what I come here to tell you to-night!" she cried. "That's what you know, now. But I want you to know that while I've been bad, as bad as women get, that I've been open about it; I ain't been no hypocrite; I ain't passed as a good woman an' ... been bad--"
Ann leaped to her feet and confronted the girl, for the moment furious, combative. They faced one another in the faint light that came through the windows and before her roused intensity Nora stepped backward, yielding suddenly, frightened by this show of vigorous indignation, for she had believed that her accusation would grind the spirit, the pride, from Ann.
Ann's hands clenched and opened convulsively at her sides as she groped fruitlessly for words.
"You go now, Nora; go away from me! What you have said has been too contemptible, too base for me even to answer!"
She walked quickly to the door, opened it and faced about with a gesture of command. Nora hesitated a moment, then, without a word, walked from the room. In the hall she paused, back still toward Ann as though she had more that she would say, as if, possibly, she considered the advisability of going further; but, if that was true, she had no opportunity then, for the door closed firmly and the lock clicked.
It was the most confused moment in Ann's life. The identification of her husband, her several trying scenes with Bayard, would not compare with it. She heard Nora's slow, receding footsteps with infinite relief and, when they were quite gone, she realized that as she stood, back to the door, she was shaking violently. She was weakened, frightened by what had passed, and, as she strove through those minutes to control her thoughts, to marshal the elements of the ordeal through which she had come, she became possessed by the terrifying conviction that she had no defence to offer! That she could not answer the other woman's accusations, that by telling Nora she was above replying to those charges she was only hiding behind a front of false superiority, a veneer of assurance that was as artificial as it was thin.