Part 45 (1/2)
CHAPTER XXI
She stared at her own face in the gla.s.s without seeing it. Her brain was filled with the loud, hurried ticking of the clock. It sounded somehow as if it were out of gear. She felt herself swaying slightly as she stood.
She was not going to faint bodily. It seemed to her rather that the immaterial bonds, the unseen, subtle, intimate connections were letting go their hold. Her soul was the heart of the danger. It was there that the travelling powers of dissolution, accelerated, multiplying, had begun their work and would end it. Its moments were not measured by the ticking of the clock.
She had remained standing as Lucy had left her, with her back to the door he had gone out by. She was thus unaware that a servant of the hotel had come in, that he had delivered some message and was waiting for her answer.
She started as the man spoke to her again. With a great effort her brain grasped and repeated what he had said.
”Mr. Marston.”
No; she was certainly not going to faint. There was no receding of sensation. It was resurgence and invasion, violence shaking the very doors of life. She heard the light, tremulous tread of the little pulses of her body, scattered by the ringing hammer strokes of her heart and brain. She heard the clock ticking out of gear, like the small, irritable pulse of time.
She steadied her voice to answer.
”Very well. Show him in.”
Marston's face, as he approached her, was harder and stiffer than ever; his bearing more uncompromisingly upright and correct. He greeted her with that peculiar deference that he showed to women whose acquaintance he had yet to make. Decency required that he should start on a fresh and completely purified footing with the future Mrs. Robert Lucy.
”It's charming of you,” he said, ”to let me come in.”
”I wanted to see you, Wilfrid.”
Something in her tone made him glance at her with a look that restored her, for a moment, to her former place.
”That is still more charming,” he replied.
”I've done what you told me. I've given him up.”
A heavy flush spread over his face and relaxed the hard tension of the muscles.
”I thought you'd do it.”
”Well, I have done it.” She paused.
”That's all I had to say to you.”
Her voice struck at him like a blow. But he bore it well, smiling his hard, reticent smile.
”I knew you'd do it,” he repeated; ”but I didn't think you'd do it quite so soon. Why did you?”
”You know why.”
”I didn't mean to put pressure on you, Kitty. It was _your_ problem.
Still, I'm glad you've seen it in the right light.”
”You think you made me see it?”