"What you feel like doing isn't important, and what I tell you
to do is," John Galbraith had said to her on the day this strange
divided life of hers had begun. And this lesson, taken to heart, had
spelt salvation to her--for half of the time; for as many hours of the
day as he went on telling her to do something. Those hours, in a way
almost incredible to herself when they were over, had been almost
happy--would have been altogether happy, but for the stain that soaked
through in memory and in anticipation, from the other half of her days.
But when evening rehearsal was over and she came back to her room and
had to undress and put out her light and relax her mind for sleep,
letting the terrors that came to tear at her do their unopposed worst,
then the girl who sang and danced and was so nearly happy snatching John
Galbraith's intentions half formed, and executing them in the thrill of
satisfaction over work well done, became an utterly unreal, incredible
person--the mere figment of a dream that couldn't--couldn't possibly
recur again even as a dream; the only self in her that had any actual
existence was Rodney Aldrich's wife and the mother of his children,
lying here in a mean bed, or looking with feverish eyes out of the
window in a North Clark Street rooming house, in a torment of thwarted
desire for him that was by no means wholly mental or psychical.
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