Deane’s face was white and she spoke quietly, as though faint.
“I believe you enjoyed it. How can you be so impersonal?”
Martin put his chin in his hands. How could two people, close in passion, united in mind, lapse into these subtle quarrels? There was no basis. The quarrel was an excuse for something deeper.
Analyzing himself, Martin tried to find the fault within him. Coldly, impersonally, he reviewed the scene, not sparing himself in any way. It was impossible. Deane had subtly forced the argument. Deeply, actually, she had been the aggressor. Martin accepted this with no pleasure. Deane would not intentionally wound him. _Not intentionally._ The phrase gathered meaning. Unconsciously she had created the picture. Why? Nothing on the surface. Nothing of which she was conscious. Rather, some deep-seated demand for pain. Pain for herself and for him. A hunger to wound and be wounded. Martin shook his head helplessly. From his chair he could see Deane sitting quietly serene, apparently indifferent. No. It was a simulated indifference. A strange play with no tenable motive. She must be as aware of the chasm between them as he. Out of this isolation she was drawing something. Something that fed her. It was inexplicable to Martin, for Deane was not a tyrant. She was, however, feminine. And now, the roots of all womanhood shone grimly through. Martin wondered, hesitated, and spoke.
“Deane, are you well? I mean,” he continued, “is it the time of the moon, you know?”
“Well, then,” he said, “I should have been more considerate.”
“Don’t be impossible,” Deane exclaimed. “My condition has nothing at all to do with our discussion.”
“I’m inclined to believe, Deane, that it has everything to do with it.”
“That is ridiculous,” she answered, flushing. “It isn’t nice.”
Martin looked at her closely. Deane’s eyes were implacable. Cold, glassed-in, the poisonous shell moved around her. He could not reach her. He thought quickly, fantastically, in his unhappiness. The period. The time of the moon. The time eggs swell and burst into a live stream. In his vision he watched a flood of red, elliptical objects swing in a gigantic arch from heaven to earth. Rolling and whispering through the dark air, they poured in a fast tide past his aching eyes. Redolent of life, acrid with blood, they cried from the great sky-womb into the whirling land. Symbolic of woman’s supremacy, the scarlet bank lightened, faded and died, that it might live again.