She was aware that she struggled to face him with fierce protesting eyes.The next thing she knew was that she lay for the second time that afternoon in his arms.She felt that he laid her, clumsily but gently, upon the sofa; some one sprinkled cold water on her forehead.Deep down in her soul she hated and despised herself for this weakness before strangers.She closed her eyes tightly, desiring to conceal not so much the others as herself from her scornful gaze.She heard some one say something about a cup of tea, and she wanted it suddenly with a desperate, fiery desire, but she would not speak, no, not if they were to torture her with thirst for days and days--to that extent at least she could preserve her independence.
She heard her Aunt Elizabeth say something like: "Poor thing--strain--last week--father--too much."
She gathered all her energies together to say "It hasn't been too much.I'm all right," but they brought her a cup of tea, and before that she succumbed.She drank it with eager greed, then lay back, her eyes closed, and slowly the bars of hot iron withdrew from her forehead.She slept.
She woke to a room wrapped in a green trembling twilight.She was alone save for the black cat.The fire crackled, the gas was turned low, and the London murmur beyond the window was like the hum of an organ.There was no one in the room; she felt, as she lay there, an increasing irritation at her weakness.She was afraid too for her future.Did she faint like this at the earliest opportunity people would allow her no chance of earning her living.Where was that fine independent life upon which, outside Borhedden Farm, she had resolved? And these people, her aunts, the young man, the thin spectacled man, what would they think of her? They would name it affectation, perhaps, and imagine that she had acted in such a way that she might gain their interest and sympathy.Such a thought sent the colour flaming to her cheeks; she sat up on the sofa.She would go to them at once and show them that she was perfectly strong and well.