Thirteen years ago Lloyd had made those assertions, and she had
accepted them and built them into a shelter against the assailing
consciousness that she was an outlaw, pillaging respect and honor from
her community. Until now nothing had ever shaken that shelter. Nor had
its dark walls been pierced by the disturbing light of any heavenly
vision declaring that when personal happiness conflicts with any great
human ideal, the right to claim such happiness is as nothing compared
to the privilege of resigning it. She had not liked the secrecy which
her shelter involved, no refined temperament likes secrecy. But the
breaking of the law, in itself, had given her no particular concern;
behind her excusing platitudes she had always been comfortable enough.
Even that whirlwind of anger at Benjamin Wright's contempt had only
roused her to buttress her shelter with declarations that she was not
harming anybody. But sitting there between William King and his wife,
in the midst of decorously mournful Old Chester, she knew she could
never say that any more; not only because a foolish and ill-balanced
youth had been unable to survive a shattered ideal, but because she
began suddenly and with consternation to understand that the whole
vast fabric of society rested on that same ideal. And she had been
secretly undermining it! Her breath caught, strangling, in her throat.
In the crack of the pistol and the crash of ruined family life she
heard for the first time the dreadful sound of the argument of her
life to other lives; and at that sound the very foundation of those
excuses of her right to happiness, rocked and crumbled and left her
selfishness naked before her eyes.
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