Chapter 5

I BECOME A WOMAN

Aunt Emma burst into the room, all horror and astonishment. She
looked at the Inspector for a few seconds in breathless indignation;
then she broke out in a tone of fiery remonstrance which fairly
surprised me:

"What do you mean by this intrusion, sir? How dare you force your
way into my house in my absence? How dare you encourage my servants
to disobey my orders? How dare you imperil this young lady's health
by coming here to talk with her?"

She turned round to me anxiously. I suppose I was very flushed with
excitement and surprise.

"My darling child," she cried, growing pale all at once, "Maria
should never have allowed him to come inside the door! You should
have stopped upstairs! You should have refused to see him! I shall
have you ill again on my hands, as before, after this. He'll have
undone all the good the last four years have done for you!"

But I was another woman now. I felt it in a moment.

"Auntie dearest," I answered, moving across to her, and laying my
hand on her shoulder to soothe her poor ruffled nerves, "don't be
the least alarmed. It's I who'm to blame, and not Maria. I told her
to let this gentleman in. He's done me good, not harm. I'm so glad
to have been allowed at last to speak freely about it!"

Aunt Emma shook all over, visibly to the naked eye.

"You'll have a relapse, my child!" she exclaimed, half crying, and
clinging to me in her terror. "You'll forget all you've learned:
you'll go back these four years again!--Leave my house at once, sir!
You should never have entered it!"

I stood between them like a statue.

"No, stop here a little longer," I said, waving my hand towards him
imperiously. "I haven't yet heard all it's right for me to hear....
Auntie, you mistake. I'm a woman at last. I see what everything
means. I'm beginning to remember again. For four years that hateful
Picture has haunted me night and day. I could never shut my eyes for
a minute without seeing it. I've longed to know what it all meant;
but whenever I've asked, I've been repressed like a baby. I'm a baby
no longer: I feel myself a woman. What the Inspector here has told
me already, half opens my eyes: I must have them opened altogether
now. I can't stop at this point. I'm going back to Woodbury."

Aunt Emma clung to me still harder in a perfect agony of passionate
terror.

"To Woodbury, my darling!" she cried. "Going back! Oh, Una, it'll
kill you!"

"I think not," the Inspector answered, with a very quiet smile.
"Miss Callingham has recovered, I venture to say, far more
profoundly than you