Part 24 (2/2)
”It isn't there! I tell you--”
”I thought it could make no difference to you!”
”It was--lucky--Ellen.”
”Oh, lucky, Jasper?”
He made an effort to pull himself together.
”It won't make any difference to me--not to my writing; not to my genius.”
After the silence of a moment her voice came to him in its low even measure.
”Then--; write!”
”Of course.” His tone was high pitched, hysterical. ”Naturally I'll write.”
”Write, Jasper.”
He caught up his pen and dipped it in the ink. He drew the white pile of paper nearer to him.
”Jasper--”
”How can I work if you don't stop talking? How can I do anything? How can I write?”
”Are--you--writing--Jasper? Are--you--?”
He did not answer her.
”Because;” she went on very quietly. ”It's gone back, Jasper.
It's--gone--now--”
His pen went to and fro; to and fro across the page. His figure was bent well over the desk. Every now and again, without moving, his bulging blue eyes would lift themselves to the clear blank blind of the window opposite and then they would come back and fix themselves intently upon the white page of paper which he was so busily covering with stupid, meaningless little drawings.
THE EFFIGY
”Mr. Evans is upstairs in the library, ma'am.”
Genevieve Evans hurried through the hall and up the steps. She pulled off her gloves as she went. She rolled them into a hard, small ball and tucked them automatically in her m.u.f.f.
She had hoped that she would get there before him. She had been thinking of that all during the quick rush home. She would have liked to have had a moment to pull herself together. After what she had been through she wondered if she could keep from going all to pieces. It could not be helped. She did not even know if she cared a lot about it. She was quite numbed. He was there ahead of her; there in the library. Of all the rooms in the house that he should have chosen the one so rarely used.
The room she hated.
At the door of the library she paused breathless.
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