"Go. Of course you must go." She felt hysterical. She took up her hat.
He could not endure the cold reserved look that came over her face. "Julia." Hating her, he put his arms about her, and when her body suddenly relaxed he resented its unexpected pliancy.
I don't know her, he repeated to himself with a kind of despair against her.
Julia unlocked the front door and stepped into the still hall. A neat mirror was set in the wall of the white-paneled vestibule. Here she saw herself reflected dimly. Everything about her was rich-colored in the afterglow that came golden through the long glass in the niches on either side of the entrance. The polished floor was like a pool. Julia felt that she had never seen her house before and this was a moment which would never come again.
When she went into the dining room she found the table laid, and the knives and forks on the vague white cloth were rich with the purplish luster of the twilight. The white plates looked secret with reflections. Beyond the table, through the French windows, she could see the darkness that was in the back yard close to the earth, but above the high wall at the end was the brilliant empty sky. The base of the elm tree was in the shadow. The top, with its new buds, glistened stiffly.
She passed into the clean narrow kitchen. She had planned white sinks and cupboards when she and her husband, Laurence Farley, were directing the renovation of the place. Julia loved the annihilating quality of whiteness.
Old Nellie, standing before the stove, glanced impassively at her mistress.
"Dinner time, Nellie?" Julia wondered what was in the old woman's mind, what made her so strong in her reticence that everything about her seemed carved from her own will. The long strong arms moved stiffly in the black sleeves. The ungainly hands moved heavily and surely.
"Reckon 'tis, Miss Julia." Nellie mumbled with her cracked purplish lips. When she smiled her brown face remained cold. She wore a wig of straight black hair, but baldish patches of gray wool showed under the edges against the rich dry color of her neck. Her shoulders were rounded as if by the weight of her arms. Her breasts fell forward. When she moved, her spine remained rigid above the sunken hips of a thin old savage woman. Her buttocks dragged. She was bent with strength.