“Go!” she said, permitting no further utterance, now that he had said what he had come to say. A passionate joy in her ability to deal harshly with him, regardless of the personal risk to herself in so doing, seized her. She had not subjected her line of action to the scrutiny of judgment. For once thoroughly a woman, in that she discarded the masculine caution which she had cultivated as a habit, she gave head to instinct, which carried her past all doubt, all weighing of chances, to the least dangerous course that, in her situation, was open to her. Almost an insane fury to send one final shaft that should sting in the breast of this woman seized this man who, by all of his traditions, should have held himself the better together, the farther his plans miscarried. Moving toward the door, he cried: “Shall I report to my employers--your sons?” To this she had the single word, “Go!” When he was gone, she did not break under the relaxation of strain; but rather held herself more proudly, as if to do otherwise would be to admit to herself, the most important individual concerned, the danger in which she stood. Under the calm surface, raged a storm of irritable impatience, aroused by the thought that time must elapse before she could be called upon to face publicly the charges this man would make. She wanted to do it, at this moment. It seemed as if she must rush forth and cry: “See; here am I--I, against whom this thing is charged! Look on me and feast your eyes on me and roll the sweet morsel under your tongue! Of course, you believe it; want to believe it; but I dare you to say other than that it is a slander!” If she could have done this, it seemed to her that she would have happiness again; but to wait; not to know when the blow would fall; to hold herself ready to meet it at any instant and to have no power to hasten it,--that was the madness of the situation, that the terror it had for her. She rose and stood before a long mirror and looked at herself; as if to see if this was a different manner of woman than she who had stood there the day before. To her eyes, looking into the reflected depths of the room, her own image was representative of the world, and in facing it she seemed to taste something of that defiance of public knowledge of the scandal for which she so longed.