Part 116 (2/2)

He squeezed her hand so hard that all the blood seemed to leave it.

”Good-night! I'll come round to-morrow. Good-night.”

He seemed reluctant to depart, still held her hand. But at last he just repeated ”Good-night!” and let it go.

”Good-night, dear Alston,” she murmured.

Claude went with him into the lobby and shut the sitting-room door behind them. She heard their voices talking, but could not hear any words. The voices continued for what seemed to her a long while. She moved about the room, saw Alston's red roses where she had laid them down when she came in from the theater, and the vase full of water which the German waiter had brought. And she began to put the flowers in the water, lifting them carefully and slowly one by one. They had very long stems and all their leaves. She arranged them with apparent sensitiveness. But she was scarcely conscious of what she was doing.

When all the roses were in the vase she did not know what else to do.

And she stood still listening to the murmur of those voices. At last it ceased. She heard a door shut. Then the sitting-room door opened, and Claude came in.

”What a lot you had to say to each--” she began.

She stopped. Claude's face had stopped her.

”Shall I ring for the waiter to clear away?” she said falteringly, after a moment of silence.

”He came when Alston and I were in the lobby. I told him to leave it all till to-morrow. Do you mind?”

”No.”

Claude shut the door. His eyes still held the intensity, the blazing expression which had stopped the words on her lips. Always Claude's face was expressive. She remembered how forcibly she had been struck by that fact when she walked airily into Max Elliot's music-room. But she had never before seen him look as he was looking now. She felt frightened of him, and almost frightened of herself.

”I had something to say to Alston,” Claude said, coming up to her. ”I don't think I could have rested to-night unless I had said it. I'm sure I couldn't.”

”You were telling him again how splendidly--”

”No. He knew what I thought of his work. I told him that before supper.

I had to tell him something else--what I thought of my own.”

”What you--what you thought of your own!”

”Yes. What I thought of my own spurious, contemptible, heartless, soulless, hateful work.”

”Claude!” she faltered.

”Don't you know it is so? Don't you know I am right? You may have deceived yourself in Algeria. You may have deceived yourself even here at all the rehearsals. But, Charmian”--his eyes pierced her--”do you dare to tell me that to-night, when you were part of an audience, when you were linked with those hundreds and hundreds of listeners, do you dare to tell me you didn't know to-night?”

”How can you--oh, how can you speak like this? Oh, how can you attack your own child?” she cried, finding in herself still a remnant of will, a remnant of the fierceness that belongs to deep feeling of any kind.

”It's unworthy. It's cruel, brutal. I can't hear you do it. I won't--”

”Do you mean to tell me that to-night when you sat in the theater you didn't know? Well, if you do tell me so I shall not believe you. No, I shall not believe you.”

She was silent, remembering her sense of struggle in the theater, her strong feeling that she was engaged on a sort of horrible, futile fight against the malign power of the audience.

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