The Immortal Moment Part 45

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?"

"I should hope you'd see it for yourself. It was obvious."

"What was obvious?"

"The unsuitability of the entire arrangement. Was it likely you'd stick to it when you saw what you were in for?"

"You think I tired of him?"

"I think you saw possibilities of fatigue; and, like a wise child, you chucked it. It's as well you did it before instead of after. I say, how did Lucy take it?"

She did not answer. His smile flickered and died under the oppression of her silence.

"Have you done with him altogether? He didn't suggest--er--any compromise?"

"He did not."

"He wouldn't. Compromise is foreign to his nature."

He sat leaning forward, contemplating, with apparent satisfaction, his own strong-grained, immaculate hands. From time to time he tapped the floor with a nervous movement of his foot.

"Then," he said presently, "if that's so, there's no reason, is there, why you shouldn't come back to me?"

"I can't come back to you. I told you so yesterday."

"Since yesterday the situation has altered considerably; or rather, it remains precisely where it was before."

"No, Wilfrid; things can never be as they were before."

"Why not?--if I choose to ignore this episode, this little aberration on your part. You must be equally anxious to forget it. In which case we may consider our relations uninterrupted."

"Do you think I gave Robert Lucy up to go back to you?"

"My dear Kitty, if I'm willing to take you back after you gave _me_ up for him, I think my att.i.tude almost const.i.tutes a claim."

"A claim?"

"Well, let's say it ent.i.tles me to a hearing. You don't seem to realise, in the least, my extreme forbearance. I never reproached you. I never interfered between you and Lucy. You can't say I didn't play the game."

"I'm not saying it. I know you didn't betray me."

"Betray you? My dear child, I helped you. I never dreamed of standing in your way as long as there was a chance of your marrying. Now that there is none----"

"That has nothing to do with it. I told you that I wouldn't go back to you in any case."

"Come, I don't propose to throw you over for any other woman. Surely it would be more decent to come back to me than to go off with some other man, heaven knows whom, which is what you must do--eventually?"