When I turned to go down to the smoking-room, she said: “Don’t be very
long, Ronald.”
I muttered I scarcely know what words in reply. It was close on midnight
before I went to bed. When I entered her room, shielding the light of
the candle with my hand, she was still awake.
Nestling against the pillows, she stretched herself curiously and smiled
up at me.
“I thought you were never coming, dear,” she said.
I knew that I was very pale, but she did not remark it. I got into bed,
but left the candle still burning.
Presently she said:
“Why don’t you put the candle out?”
I looked at her furtively. Her face seemed to me carved in stone, it was
so rigid, so expressionless. She lay away from me at the extreme edge of
the bed, sideways, with her hands toward me.
“Why don’t you?” she repeated, with her blue eyes on me.
“I don’t feel sleepy,” I answered slowly.
“You never will while there is a light in the room,” she said.
“You wish me to put it out?”
“Yes. How odd you are to-night, Ronald! Is anything the matter?”
“No,” I answered; and I blew the light out.
How ghastly the darkness was!
I believed she meant to smother me in my sleep. I knew it. I determined
to keep awake.
It was horrible to think that, as we lay there, she could see me all the
time as if it were daylight.
The night wore on. She was quite silent and motionless. I lay listening.
It must have been towards morning when I closed my eyes, not because I
was sleepy, but because I was so tired of gazing at blackness.
Soon after I had done this there was a stealthy movement in the bed.
“Margot, are you awake?” I instantly cried out sharply.
The movement immediately ceased. There was no reply.
When the light of dawn stole in at the window she seemed to be sleeping.
*****
Last night I did not close my eyes once. She did not move.
She means to tire me out, and she has the strength to do it. To-night I
feel so intensely heavy. Soon I must sleep, and then----
Shall I seek any longer to defend myself? Everything seems so
inevitable, so beyond my power, like the working of an inexorable
justice bent on visiting the sin of the father upon the child. For was
not the cruel boy the father of the man?
And yet, is this tragedy inevitable? It cannot be. I will be a man. I
will rise up and combat it. I will take Margot away from this house
that her soul remembers, in which its body so long ago was tortured and
slain, and she will--she must forget.
Instinct will sleep once more. It shall be so. I will have it so. I will
strew poppies over her soul. I will take her far away from here, far
away, to places where she will be once more as she has been.