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Updated: June 2, 2025
"What?" Janet sat down on the bed, putting out her hand. Unconsciously she began to stroke Lise's hand, and presently it turned and tightened on her own. "Lise," she said, "I understand why you " she could not bring herself to pronounce the words "got drunk," "I understand why you did it. I oughtn't to have talked to you that way. But it was terrible to wake up and see you."
A sense of Lise's need of protection invaded her, a sharp conviction, like a pang, that Lise was destined to wander: Janet was never so conscious of the feeling as in this dark hour, though it came to her at other times, when they were not quarreling. Quarreling seemed to be the normal reaction between them.
It was understood by Lise's friends and Lise's family, though not by the gentleman himself, that his position was only temporary or at most probationary; he had not even succeeded to the rights, title, and privileges of the late Mr. Wiley, though occupying a higher position in the social scale being the agent of a patent lawn sprinkler with an office in Faber Street.
At last she let them fall, her head turning slowly, as though drawn, by some irresistible, hypnotic power, and their eyes met. Lise's were filmed, like those of a dog whose head is being stroked, expressing a luxuriant dreaminess uncomprehending, passionate. "Say, did I wake you?" she asked. "I did my best not to make any noise honest to God." "It wasn't the noise that woke me up," said Janet.
How wonderful, she thought, to be able to dwell in such a beautiful place, to have as friends and companions such amusing and intelligent people as the stranger with whom she had talked! Were all the inhabitants of Silliston like him? They must be, since it was a seat of learning. Lise's cry, "I've just got to go away, anywhere," found an echo in Janet's soul. Why shouldn't she go away?
And it was the memory of this incident that suddenly threw a glaring, evil light on all of Lise's conduct during the past months her accidental dropping of the vanity case and the gold coin! Now she knew for a certainty what had happened to her sister. Having dressed herself, she entered the kitchen, which was warm, filled with the smell of frying meat.
There's her picture." To Janet, especially in the mood of reaction in which she found herself that evening, Lise's intense excitement, passionate partisanship and approval of Miss Nealy were incomprehensible, repellent.
Suddenly, seemingly by chance, her eyes fell on the box of drug-store candy from which the cheap red ribbon had been torn, and by some odd association of ideas it suggested and epitomized Lise's Sunday excursion with a mama hideous travesty on the journey of wonders she herself had taken. Had that been heaven, and this of Lise's, hell?... And was.
It was odd, this morning, how her notice of little, familiar things had the power to add to her pain, brought to mind memories become excruciating as she filled the water pitcher from the kitchen tap she found herself staring at the nick broken out of it when Lise had upset it. She recalled Lise's characteristically flippant remark.
Then she took my bowl and held it out to her father to have it refilled, and when it was full she brought it to me with such a sweet smile, that in spite of my hunger, I sat staring at her, without thinking to take it from her. The second bowlful disappeared promptly like the first. It was no longer a smile that curved Lise's pretty lips; she burst out laughing.
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