For some time after Rose had left her, Berny remained on the bench, not moving, her glance resting on that part of the path whence the young girl’s figure had faded from view.
The night slowly deepened, impregnating the gray atmosphere with a velvety1 depth of shadow that oozed2 through it like an infusion3 of a darker, denser4 element. Lights came out. First sporadically5, here and there blooming through the opaque6 dusk, not suddenly, but with an effect of gradualness, as though the air was so thick it took some time to break through it. Then came more. Rows of windows appeared in long, magnified sputters7. All round the plaza8 there was a suggestion of effaced9 brightness, as of a painting which had once been sharply outlined and brilliant but was now rubbed into a formless, impressionist study of shadows and undefined, yellow blurs10. The golden halos of lamps blotted11 the dark at intervals12, and now and then the figures, which had occupied the benches, passed into the circles[433] of vaporous illumination, and passed out of them, as if they had been crossing the stage of a theater.
Berny did not move and did not notice the increasing chill of the hour or the moisture beading on her clothes like wintry rime13. She was sunk in an abyss of thought, a suspended trance of contemplation, of receptivity to new ideas. In one hour her basic estimate of human nature, her accepted measurement of motives14 and standards, had been suddenly upset. Her point of view was like a kaleidoscope, which is unexpectedly turned. Sitting motionless on the bench she saw the familiar aspect of life fallen into new shapes, taking on alien forms.
She realized that Dominick had never been happy with her, and, for the first time, she understood the gulf15 between them. She saw what the life was that he had wanted to lead, and that he could have led with the other woman. It would have been that very form of existence which Berny had always derided16, and thought an outward expression of the inward dullness of people who had children, looked shabby, and did not care for money. Now she felt unsure as to whether her scorn of it was not foolish and unenlightened. As in a sudden forward shoot of a search-light, she saw them—Dominick and Rose—happy in a way she had never dreamed of being happy, in a world so far from hers that she had never before had a clear look at it, a man and woman[434] concentrated upon the piece of life that belonged to them, living passionately17 for each other, indifferent to all that seemed to her of value.
She brought her mental vision back from this upon herself and felt shaken and slightly sick. Seeing beyond the circle of her own experience and sensation for the first time, she would have said to any companion who might have shared her thoughts, “No wonder Dominick didn’t get on with me!” For a dispassionately-contemplative moment she saw herself in Dominick’s eyes; she saw their married life as it had been to him. She felt sorry for both of them—for him in his forced acquiescence18 with the conditions around him, for herself because of her ignorance of all he had wanted and expected.
“I couldn’t be any different,” she whispered to herself, “that’s the way I am.”
She never could be any different. She was one kind of woman and Rose Cannon19 was another, and Dominick belonged to Rose Cannon’s kind. She did not know that it was so much better than her kind but it was different. They made her feel like an outsider in a distant world, and the feeling gave her a sensation of deadly depression. The burning heat of resentment20 that had made her speak to Rose was gone. All the burning heats and angers of the last two months seemed to belong to the past. An icy, nostalgic ache of loneliness had hold of her. The accustomed[435] sense of intimacy21 and warm, enjoying interest in the world—what we mean when we talk of “living”—had been completely drawn22 out of her.
The cold, biting in to her marrow23, at last woke her to a realization24 of her surroundings, and she sat upright, looking blinkingly to the right and left. The half-lit plaza lay like a lake of shadow surrounded by a circlet of light and girdled by noise. It was like the brightness and animation25 of the world flowing round her but not touching26 her, as she sat alone in the darkness.
She rose suddenly, determined27 to escape from her gloomy thoughts, and walked toward the upper end of the square, directing her steps to the Spanish and Italian section of the city which is called the Latin Quarter. She walked slowly, not knowing where to go, only determined that she would not go home. She thought for a moment of her sisters’, where she could have dinner and find the cheer of congenial society. But on consideration she felt that this, too, was more than she could just now bear. They would torment28 her with questions and she felt in no mood to put them off or to be confidential29. Finally she remembered a Mexican restaurant, to visit which had at one time been a fashion. She had been there with Hazel and Josh, and once in a party with some of the bank people. She knew where the place was and felt that she[436] could dine there with no fear of encountering any one she knew.
With an objective point in view, her step gained decision, and she moved forward briskly, leaving the plaza and plunging30 into the congeries of picturesque31 streets which harbor a swarming32 foreign population. The lights of shops and open stalls fell out into the fog, transforming it into thick, churning currents of smoky pallor. Wet walls and sidewalks showed a gold veneer33, and lingering drops, trembling on cornices, hung like tiny globes of thin yellow glass.
People and things looked magnified and sometimes horrible seen through this mysterious, obscuring medium. Once behind a pane34 of glass she saw lines of detached, staring eyes, fastened glaringly on her as she advanced. It was the display in an optician’s show-window, where glass eyes were disposed in fanciful lines, like a decoration. She looked at them askance, feeling that there was something sinister35 in their wide, unwinking scrutiny36. She hurried by the market stalls, where the shawled figures of women stood huddled37 round the butcher’s block. They looked as if they might be grouped round a point of interest, bending to stare at something lying there, something dreadful, like a corpse38, Berny thought.
When she saw the Mexican restaurant she felt relieved. The strange atmospheric39 conditions seemed to have played upon her nerves and she[437] was glad to get somewhere where she could find warmth and light and people. The place, a little shabby house dating from the era of the projecting shingle40 roof and encircling balcony, stood on a corner with windows on two streets. It was built upon a slope so sharp that the balcony, which in front skirted the second story, in the back was on a level with the sidewalk. The bright light of gas-jets, under shades of fluted41 white china, fell over the contents of the show-window. They were not attractive. A dish of old and shriveled oranges stood between a plate of tamales and another of red and green peppers. There were many flies in the window, and, chilled by the cold, they stood along the inside of the glass in a state of torpor42.
Berny pushed open the door and entered. The front part of the place was used as a grocery store and had a short counter at one side, behind which stood shelves piled high with the wares43 demanded by the Mexican and Spanish population. Back of this were the tables of the restaurant. The powerful, aromatic44 odors of the groceries blended with the even more powerful ones of the Mexican menu. The room was close and hot. In a corner, his back braced45 against the wall, a Spaniard, with inky hair and a large expanse of white shirt bosom46, was languidly picking at a guitar.
Berny knew that there was an inner sanctum[438] for the guests that preferred more secluded47 quarters, and walked past the counter and between the tables. An arched opening connected with this room. Coarse, dirty, lace curtains hung in the archway and, looped back against gilt48 hooks, left a space through which a glimpse of the interior was vouchsafed49 to the diners without. It was smaller than the restaurant proper, and was fitted up with an attempt at elegance50. Lace curtains—also coarse and dirty—veiled the windows, and two large mirrors, with tarnished51 and fly-spotted gilt frames, hung on the wall opposite the entrance.
Just now it was sparsely52 patronized. In one corner two women in mourning and a child were sitting. They glanced at Berny with languid curiosity and then resumed a loud and voluble conversation in Spanish. A party of three Jews, an over-dressed woman and two young men—evidently visitors from another part of town—sat near them. On the opposite side there was no one. Berny slipped noiselessly into a chair at the corner table, her back against the partition that shut off the rest of the dining-room. She felt sheltered in this unoccupied an............