Young Renny. Mazo de la Roche

      Now she minded the sharpness of the stone sill against her breast. She minded it very much. It seemed to cut into the tender flesh, to cut into it cruelly, right to her very heart. She was sure that the sharpness and chill of the stone had penetrated to the core of her heart. She pressed her hands there and crept back into the bed. She crept into it and drew the covers, first up to her chin, then quite over her head. All she thought at first was — “How cold I am! How cold and sharp the sill was!” Then she saw, before her tightly shut eyes, Keno’s face turned up toward her window with his fixed spaniel’s grin. As she pictured it, the grin became more and more terrible to her, till she shook like a leaf with fear of it.

      She opened her eyes wide. She saw nothing but the dim paleness beneath the bedclothes. She smelt the delicate fragrance of her own body. She remembered the warm bath she had had the night before, how she had sat in the old bath from which the enamel was peeling, and scrubbed the firm whiteness of her flesh with a flannel well lathered with Windsor soap. She had been so happy she had scarcely known what to do with herself, but had lathered and splashed and only half dried herself, and left the huge bath sheet in a heap in the middle of the floor.

      Now a voice came to her penetrating the bedclothes drawn over her head. It was the voice of Noah Binns and it said: —

      “I’ve turrible news fur you. I guess there won’t be no wedding now.”

      The words came first in a kind of sickly whisper that seemed to enter into her consciousness through her very pores. Then they were repeated louder and louder till at last they were shouted at her so that the very sheet vibrated with the thunder of them. She had a strange sensation of being under water and discovered that she was dripping with sweat. She sat up and pushed the bedclothes from her. One of her plaits had wound itself tightly about her neck. She felt as though it were deliberately trying to choke her. With a gasp she unwound it and held it in her hands, looking blankly down at the glossy curl on the end. Then she twisted the plait in her hands, wringing it and dragging at it as though she would pull it off. She threw herself back on her pillow and suddenly began to make whimpering noises. The next moment she thought she would break into loud screams and disturb the house from its sleep. But she caught the plait in her teeth and, biting on it with all her force, was able to restrain herself. At last she lay quite still.

      She had a fresh and happy adolescence free from dark thoughts and morbid speculations concerning sex. Maurice had been the man she was going to marry; after the wedding he would take her to Vaughanlands to live. She had put all troubling thoughts away from her. Her mind had been filled by the preparations for the wedding. But now all the hints of lust that she had ever heard, all the phrases that puzzled her when she had read her Bible, were made clear, clarified beyond all other earthly things, made into the very sinister soul of the world. She lay motionless for a long while, deliberately recalling all she could of these things. One or two obscene words she had heard came into her mind. The gong sounded for rising and, after a little, she heard Eden’s voice laughing and chattering and the baby Peep crowing with joy. The pigeons above her eaves, which had flown away in search of breakfast, now returned and again took up the tale of

       their billing and cooing. Little they know, she thought to herself, little they know!