She forgot about
the passage of time and the fact that she had not dined. Not wishing to
talk of marriage, she talked instead of the possibility of friendship
between men and women. As she talked her own mind seemed to her to have
become clearer. "It's all foolishness your going on as you have," she
declared. "I know how dissatisfied and unhappy you sometimes are. I often
feel that way myself. Sometimes I think it's marriage I want. I really
think I want to draw close to some one. I believe every one is hungry for
that experience. We all want something we are not willing to pay for. We
want to steal it or have it given us. That's what's the matter with me, and
that's what's the matter with you."
They came to the Woodburn house, and turning in stood on a porch in the
darkness by the front door. At the back of the house Clara could see
a light burning. Her aunt and uncle were at the eternal figuring and
knitting. They were finding a substitute for living. It was the thing Frank
Metcalf was protesting against and was the real reason for her own constant
secret protest. She took hold of the lapel of his coat, intending to make a
plea, to urge upon him the idea of a friendship that would mean something
to them both. In the darkness she could not see his rather heavy, sullen
face. The maternal instinct became strong in her and she thought of him
as a wayward, dissatisfied boy, wanting love and understanding as she had
wanted to be loved and understood by her father when life in the moment of
the awakening of her womanhood seemed ugly and brutal.
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