Miss Pomeroy’s visit to Mrs. Romayne was postponed for a fortnight. At
one time, indeed, it seemed not impossible that Mrs. Pomeroy’s visit
to her sister in Devonshire might be postponed indefinitely, and Mrs.
Romayne was charmingly inconsolable over her prospective disappointment.
It was a delightful thing to have a girl in the house! Mrs. Romayne
made the discovery and the statement as the very first evening of Miss
Pomeroy’s stay with her drew to a close. And certainly, the evening,
signalised by a little dinner-party, had been pleasant enough to warrant
satisfaction. Julian had been in the best possible spirits, elated
apparently by the presence of his mother’s visitor, at whose side he
was to be found whenever his duties as host allowed such concentration
of his attention. Miss Pomeroy herself had been a model of gentle
amiability, and had looked more than usually bright and pretty. Loring,
who had made one of the dinner guests, had also been at his best and most
amusing. No conversation of any length had, of course, been possible
between him and his hostess; but a quick, low-toned word or two passed
between them in the movement that ensued upon the reappearance of the men
in the drawing-room after dinner.
And on the tone of that first evening, that of the fortnight into which
Miss Pomeroy’s stay lengthened itself was modelled. They were very
dissipated, Mrs. Romayne asserted laughingly; and she further declared
that she had never enjoyed dissipation so much. Julian’s hard-working
impulses seemed to be in partial abeyance for the time being; their
demands on him, though peremptory when they did occur, did not prevent a
great deal of attendance on his mother and her guest. Loring also seemed
hardly to have settled back into his usual routine, and frequently made
one of the party. His appearance on the scene, and the recognition of
that compact between them which he never failed to make, either by a
glance or a few quiet words, were never without a certain effect on Mrs.
Romayne; not on her spirits, for they never varied in their gaiety; but
on a hard restlessness in her eyes, always lessened for the moment by
that look or word from Loring.
The last day of June was also the last day of Mrs. Pomeroy’s absence from
London, and it was, moreover, the day fixed for a certain dance which
was to stand out from all the other dances of the season. The givers of
this dance were parvenus of the most pronounced type, and during the past
three seasons, they had paid their way into London society by spending
fortunes on the entertainments they gave. This season they had issued
cards of invitation, on which each guest was requested to wear mediæval
Florentine dress, and it had been whispered abroad that thousands were to
be spent in providing such a setting for these costumes as should eclipse
anything hitherto seen. Fortunately for the projectors--and nobody knew
better than they how absolutely impossible it was to calculate in such a
matter--the idea caught society’s fancy; it was taken up with the wild
enthusiasm which alternates in the modern mind with blank indifference;
and as every one with an invitation had spent some three weeks in ardent
consideration of his or her dress for the occasion, that occasion had
acquired a fictitious importance of a colossal nature, and was absolutely
looked forward to as promising something quite unusual--and equally
indefinite--in the way of amusement.
The whole thing had evidently been arranged, Mrs. Romayne declared gaily,
to give a final touch of triumph to the end of Maud Pomeroy’s visit to
her. It was about four o’clock in the afternoon of the day in question,
and she and Miss Pomeroy, with Julian as escort, were taking what she
described as “a little turn” in the Park when she expressed this opinion.
It was a perfect June afternoon, the Park was very full, and all three
seemed to be exhilarated either by the sunshine, the movement, or the
prospect of the evening. The fortnight’s intimate association with
her present companions had apparently had no effect whatever upon Miss
Pomeroy’s demure conventionality of manner, but her word was readier than
usual, and her expression was brighter; Mrs. Romayne talked and laughed
and kept the ball of chatter going; and about Julian’s hilarity there was
a touch of excitement which was a characteristic which had grown upon
him markedly in the course of the last month. He turned upon his mother,
protesting gaily.
“That’s much too depressing a point of view,” he said. “It forces on us
exactly what we want to forget--that it is the end. Now, I’ve made up
my mind to cut the connection between to-night and both yesterday and
to-morrow, and enjoy myself tremendously.”
“And is ‘cutting the connection’--it sounds as if something might blow
up--an indispensable preliminary?” laughed Mrs. Romayne.
“Why, of course.” He glanced at Miss Pomeroy as he spoke, and the colour
deepened in her cheeks by just a shade as she turned to Mrs. Romayne and
said, with one of her little smiles and a rather poor attempt at mock
confidence:
“Mr. Romayne wants to forget the terrific anxiety which he has already
suffered over that gorgeous dress of his, and the terrific bill from
which he has still to suffer.”
Julian’s protestations were as eager and boyish in manner as they were
delicate and skilful in matter, and Mrs. Romayne broke in upon them with
a laughing apology and a request that Julian would tell the coachman to
turn out into Piccadilly and drive to a house in Grosvenor Place. Julian
gave the order, and added to it:
“You can pull up when you get out of the Park.”
Mrs. Romayne took up the words instantly.
“Are you not coming with us, bad boy?” she said. “Come and help us
pay one call, at any rate. We are going straight home after that to
prepare ourselves for the triumphs of the evening by a little refreshing
laziness, are we not, Maud?”
“I should like to immensely!” returned Julian ardently as Miss Pomeroy
smiled a response. “But I’m afraid I must go down to the club. I promised
to meet Loring there! Dinner at eight, I suppose?” he added as the
carriage drew up and he jumped out.
He stepped back on the pavement, lifting his hat as the carriage drove
off. Then he jumped into a hansom and gave the word to drive, not to the
club but to the Temple. Arrived there he ran upstairs, the excitement
about him gaining ground moment by moment, to Marston Loring’s rooms.
Loring was there alone. He was seated at the writing-table writing
rapidly, his face keen and intent, and he suspended his work for an
instant only as he glanced up on the opening of the door and nodded a
greeting.
Julian’s life for the last month had been lived at that high pressure
which is only produced in a man by the consciousness that he has burnt
his ships. Every shilling that he had accumulated during the previous
six months was invested in the scheme propounded to him a month ago by
Marston Loring; and the history of his real life during the interval
would have been a history of the stages through which that scheme had
passed. The affairs of the Welcome Diamond Mining Company had followed
precisely the course indicated by Loring during that first interview
on the subject between Loring, Ramsay, and Julian. Shortly after that
interview “Welcomes” had fallen to a nominal price; they had then been
bought up according to arrangement. A slight rise had followed as a
matter of course, followed by an interval of vacillation, and a slow
succession of trifling advances, which had again been succeeded by a
period of quiet.
So far the excitement with which every hour had been instinct for Julian
had been the excitement of preparation solely; the ground had been tilled
and the seed sown. And what that soil was in which he had sown his seed;
what were the characteristics that were to prove so stimulating; it was
not in him to consider. He was perfectly well aware of the nature of the
transaction in which he was engaged; he had understood at the outset that
the “private information received from the Cape” on which the shares
were to be bought up was a “put up thing,” as he would have expressed
it, between Ramsay and Marston Loring; and the knowledge affected him
not at all. That black thread in the warp of his character was running
strong and deep now, and to such considerations his sensibilities were
absolutely dormant.
“Well?” The monosyllable broke from him eager and impetuous, as though
it contained the pent-up suspense and excitement of hours. He had come
up rapidly to Loring’s side, and the latter, without lifting his eyes,
signed to an evening paper which lay on the table as he said briefly:
“All right!”
Julian’s face turned quite white; he snatched up the paper and turned
with breathless eagerness to the column devoted to the money market.
“Welcome Diamond Company Shares.”
The blue eyes seemed to leap at the line and fasten on it with a hungry
avidity pitiful to see, and he stood there gazing at it with glittering,
fascinated eyes, with a curious stillness upon him from head to foot, as
though all remembrance of his actual surroundings, all thought even of
Loring, had faded. Nearly five minutes had passed when Loring laid down
his pen and leant back in his chair, turning a little that he might fix
his eyes on Julian as he stood rather behind him.
“Pretty fair?” he said carelessly.
Julian lifted his eyes from the paper and turned his white face to
Loring. He nodded as though the feelings of the moment were not to be put
into speech, and then the slow, deep colour of excitement began to creep
over his features.
“Have you seen Ramsay?” he said in a low, quick voice.
“Saw him this morning. He told me things were beginning to move. It was
that paragraph yesterday that did it!”
“And what about keeping it up?” said Julian. “This is the ticklish
moment, I take it! What’s the next move?”
He had thrown himself into a chair as he spoke; his voice was jerking
with eagerness, as though some of his excitement were finding expression.
Loring looked at him for an instant before he answered. He was asking
himself a question which had formulated itself in his mind more than once
in the last month; namely, was it merely the influence of his blood which
made young Romayne so keen a speculator; or was there something concealed
in the background of his life which made money a desperate necessity with
him?
“This is the next move,” he answered, indicating the sheets of manuscript
paper which lay before him. “This will be in one or two of the papers
to-morrow, and if I’m not mistaken it will have a big effect!”
Julian stretched out his hand impulsively for the sheets and ran through
them, now and then breaking into an eager comment; and as he finished he
rose impetuously and began to pace excitedly up and down the room. His
face was flushed now, and his eyes glowing.
“Yes, that ought to take us a long way!” he said. “And Ramsay backing it
up all the while, of course? Loring, what do you make of it? An affair
of--weeks?”
“An affair of two or three weeks, all told!” returned Loring
nonchalantly. “The inside of a month ought to put the best part of thirty
thousand into each of our pockets, my boy.”
He rose as he spoke, and gathered together the sheets of manuscript, but
as he did so his quick ear caught a strange, sharp catch in Julian’s
breath. He fastened up the papers, and directed them with another of
those slight smiles, and then turned again to the younger man. Julian was
standing at the window staring almost stupidly out.
“I’m going to turn you out now!” said Loring lightly. “Coming down to the
club with me?”
Julian turned round, but the words seemed to penetrate slowly to his
consciousness.
“No!” he said at last. “No, thanks, old man. I--I’m going to get home.”
He had to go to his own chambers first, it appeared, however, and Loring
left him with a careless “All right! See you to-night, of course!”
The sunshine had left Julian’s room, bright as it still was outside, and
it looked, perhaps, the darker by contrast as he opened the door and shut
himself in alone. He paused a moment, with his hand on the lock, and then
walked aimlessly across to the writing-table and sat down. There was a
pale, dazed look about him.
The line in the evening paper at which he had gazed with such devouring
eyes had chronicled the first important rise of those shares on which
his hopes were staked; chronicled, in fact, the beginning of the end.
As he sat there alone, the words seemed to stand out all about him; to
meet his eyes in every direction; and it was little wonder that, as
he realised that the seed so eagerly sown had indeed broken ground at
last, the perfect fruit seemed to be already in his hand, and he was
dazed and intoxicated with anticipated triumph. He had the blood of a
speculator and a gambler in his veins, and as he sprang up suddenly from
his chair and began to pace up and down the room, it was the surging of
the speculator’s instinct that flushed his face and glittered in his
eyes; the rioting of that money passion which, to the man who has never
felt its fever, is the strangest and most repulsive--as it is the most
abnormal--of all passions.
But little by little, without volition or even consciousness on his part,
the current of his thoughts changed. Gradually that greedy, tumultuous
contemplation of money as an end wavered, altered into a contemplation of
money as a means, into a passing over of that means in the realisation
of the end which it was to bring about. He was thinking of Clemence,
thinking of her in a tumult of excitement in which the goading of that
two-edged dart of love and shame which quivered always in his better
nature was absolutely unfelt; thinking of her in a very hallucination
of intoxicated triumph. He was living out with her a future life of
triumphant satisfaction; a life so utterly incompatible with the facts of
the case, with all that had come and gone, and must still come and go,
as to be a most pathetic imagining; when the sound of a clock striking
brought him suddenly to himself.
His first conscious thought was a certain vague surprise at his
surroundings; as far as externals went he had left Loring’s room and had
come to his own like a man walking in his sleep. Then he realised the
nature of the sound that had roused him, and drew out his watch to see
what hour it was that had struck. It was seven, and the fact, with the
pressing necessity for his return home which it involved, gave a turn
to the current of his thoughts by which, without changing their main
character, they were blended in with the actual practicalities of the
moment. He thought of his mother with a certain bitter triumph. “It’s
not for long,” he said to himself, “not for long now.” His mind ran on
over the details of the evening before him; the little dinner--“only
ourselves,” Mrs. Romayne had said gaily; the artificialities that would
pass between himself and his mother; the effective flirtation which he
would have to keep up with Miss Pomeroy--the flirtation which in the
excitement of the past month he had carried on recklessly. And then with
his hand on the door he stopped abruptly--stopped and stood quite still
with a strange, defiant recklessness growing in his face. Whether it was
some curious effect of the tumult through which he had passed, whether
it originated in those jubilant visions of Clemence from which he had
so recently awakened, it is not possible to say. But on that instant
there had risen within him an impulse of fierce, overmastering repulsion
against his mother, against Miss Pomeroy, against the part he had chosen
to play. Almost before he had realised the sudden sense of overwhelming
revolt and distaste which had seized him, its obverse was upon him.
Clemence! To see Clemence! To speak to Clemence! To satisfy the hungry
longing which, for the moment, seemed absolutely to possess him!
Such a longing, in various forms and degrees, had shaken and torn him
often before, but hitherto something--some influence from Clemence’s own
words, some jarring and throbbing of that better nature in himself--had
held him back. But now, strung up and carried out of himself by his
excitement, he was impervious to all considerations save that of his own
overmastering craving. The end was very near now, he told himself. It was
a question of a week or two only. He must see her; she herself would see
that it was only reasonable that he should see her!
His plans were laid in the passing of a few seconds. The only address
Clemence had given him was that of the house of business where she
worked--where she had worked when he met her first--his only chance of
seeing her lay in meeting her when she left her work at night. He would
not go home to dinner, he decided; he would telegraph to his mother, and
dine at a quiet restaurant. That would bring him, as he knew well enough,
to the earliest hour at which the “hands,” of whom Clemence made one,
were likely to be released, and he would wait in the little by-street in
which the “hands’” entrance was situated until she came.
He went out of the room with a quick, assured step, sent off his
telegram--a brief “Detained. Inconsolable”--from an office in Fleet
Street, and then, carefully avoiding the fashionable resorts, he walked
to the restaurant he had mentally selected.
The little street which, for some scores of men and women, formed the
picture evoked by a name which, for the shopping population of London,
involved a mental vision of a busy thoroughfare and a considerable
expanse of plate-glass windows, ran parallel to that thoroughfare,
divided from it only by a long block of buildings; and bearing in mind
the slight nature of the division between the two, the contrast presented
was almost startling. The little street was a thoroughfare inasmuch as
it led from one side-street to another; but these streets were very
little frequented, and the connecting-link between them was a short
cut to nowhere. It represented simply so many back entrances to places
of business, and these being to a great extent monopolised by a single
firm, the comings and goings at stated times of the hands employed by
that firm was often the only movement that broke the quiet from morning
until night. In the intervals between these comings and goings there
brooded over the street such a silence and stillness as seemed strangely
incompatible with the thought of all the labour and effort that it held;
with the hard day’s work towards which those coming footsteps in the
morning were bent; with the hard day’s work which lay behind those
departing footsteps in the evening. The street itself had a squalid,
neglected look, too, as though life and activity had passed it by.
The day’s work was not over yet, though the evening light was making
long shadows, and the setting sun was turning the upper windows of the
opposite houses into ruddy fire; the street was absolutely silent and
deserted when Julian turned quickly into it. He pulled up and surveyed
his surroundings with a rapid, comprehensive glance.
It was too early yet. He looked at his watch and told himself so with
somewhat over-elaborated carelessness, and took out his cigarette-case.
He lighted a cigarette; and pacing slowly up and down the pavement on
the opposite side of the street to that on which he expected Clemence to
emerge, he began to reckon with himself the chances for and against her
speedy or tardy appearance.
But such practical, matter-of-fact considerations involved a deliberate
mental action on his part, and having gone through it, urged by that
curious instinct under which intense excitement always desires to assert
itself as absolute calm and sanity, he gradually let himself slip away
again from the practical and the actual, and gave himself up to the tide
of his exhilarated imaginings.
There is nothing more exciting, nothing that sooner quickens the mental
pulses into a very fever of confusion, than the sudden indulgence of an
impulse long resisted. The hour that had passed since the idea, of which
his presence in that quiet little street was the outcome, had flashed
into Julian’s mind and dominated it, had carried him as completely out
of himself, and out of touch with realities, as is a man under the
influence of absinthe. As a man so exhilarated will be impervious to a
considerable amount of physical pain, so Julian was for the time being
absolutely unconscious of anything painful or shameful in his position.
The circumstances under which he had parted from Clemence; all the bitter
pain and longing under which he had smarted and writhed with such fierce
rebellion; the attitude towards himself which his conduct might only
too justly have created in his wife; were absolutely obliterated from
his mind. He was waiting now--husband, master, altogether the superior;
triumphant, successful, self-assured--for his mistaken but doubtless
submissive wife; conscious, and rather pleased with the consciousness,
that he loved her in spite of her faults.
One quarter after another chimed out from a neighbouring clock. He had
been waiting nearly an hour, oblivious, in his elation, of tedium or
weariness; oblivious of the claim upon him of the life of Queen Anne
Street as though it had no existence for him. The slight feeling of
impatience with which he realised that the fourth quarter was chiming
was entirely unconnected with such externals; and it was an eloquent
testimony to his mental attitude that it took the form of a faint sense
of irritation with Clemence for delaying so long. A vague feeling of
lordly disapproval of her conduct stirred in him, as he paused at the
top of the street and glanced across at the still fast-closed doors. He
was just looking dubiously at his cigarette-case when the click of a
latch, instantly followed by the sound of girls’ voices, made him start
violently. He thrust the case hastily into his pocket and walked quickly
down the street, until he was standing just opposite the door from which
a little stream of girls and women was pouring forth.
Several figures had already detached themselves from the stream and were
moving rapidly away, either singly or in pairs; but one quick glance told
him that neither of these was Clemence, and he fixed his eyes with eager
confidence on the doorway through which she had still to pass. His face
was flushed with intense excitement. On came the stream, girls and women
following one another in unbroken succession; pretty girls, plain girls,
shabby girls, smart girls, some arm in arm, some laughing and talking in
loud-voiced groups; several of these groups noticed his waiting figure
and commented upon it in giggling whispers, turning back as they passed
down the street to look at it again, but Julian only saw that none of
these was Clemence. The stream was beginning to dwindle; stragglers
followed one another now at irregular intervals; the two girls who had
been the last to appear had nearly reached the end of the street, and
still Julian’s eyes were riveted on the open doorway.
The girls turned the corner, and down the dim passage into which he was
looking there came slowly another figure quite alone. Before it had
emerged into the light Julian was across the road, as though that one
great throb with which his heart leapt up to meet her had impelled him
physically, and as Clemence passed out into the soft dusk of the June
evening he spoke her name, eagerly at first, then with a strange break in
his voice:
“Clemence! Clemence!”
At the first sound of his voice--evidently the first sign to her that
he was near--a low, indescribable cry broke from Clemence; she turned
towards him trembling, swaying as she stood, and Julian caught her in his
arms lest she should fall.
“You’ve come!” she cried, and before the exquisite rapture and relief of
her faint, quivering voice, with all that it implied of suffering past,
a harder man than Julian might have melted. “My dear, my dear, I knew
you’d come! I knew! I knew!”
But that pathetic voice had not been needed. The first sight of her face
as she turned it upon him with that wonderful irradiation of joy upon it,
had shrivelled into nothingness all the exultation, all the triumph and
self-satisfaction of the past few hours, and Julian held her in his arms,
his trance over, self-convicted, self-condemned; his whole consciousness
absorbed in that heavy, throbbing agony of his better nature which had
leapt into sudden relentless life. What it was that so penetrated him
he could not have defined. Where and in what proportion old influence
revived, touched, and was blended with a heart-piercing sense of the
change in her, he could not have said; he did not even know that these
were indeed the powers that had struck him. The change in her, even as he
gazed down at her face with agonised, remorseful eyes, as it rested for
one moment on his shoulder, he rather felt than traced and understood.
That change was very great. Those past six months had dealt heavily
with that thin, white face, and the marks of their passing were plain
to see, even in that moment of absolute transfiguration. Every curve,
every suggestion of girlishness seemed to have been worn away; worn
away by those cruel twin refiners, never so pitiless as when they work
together--physical suffering and mental distress. The outline of her
features had lost some of its beauty in that intense accentuation; the
colourless lips were slightly drawn, and under the sunken eyes were heavy
shadows. But no remembrance of the physical loveliness which she had lost
could stand for an instant before the spiritual loveliness which she had
gained. It was as though those twin refiners, before whom nothing earthly
or external can stand and flourish, had strengthened that which lay
behind the externals with which they had dealt so ruthlessly. The eyes,
so indescribably beautiful as they looked now into Julian’s, had been
beautiful even in that moment before she realised his presence; beautiful
in their heaviness as no brightness, as no common happiness could have
made them; beautiful with the perfect patience and dignity of accepted
suffering. The tired mouth had been beautiful in its repose, as it was
beautiful now in its tremulous rapture; beautiful in its quiet constancy
and self-abnegation.
She let herself rest for a moment in his arms; clinging to him with
something in her touch which he had never felt before; looking up into
his face as her head lay back against his shoulder with a strange,
tremulous, tender light quivering on every feature, shaken from head
to foot by little tremulous, tearless sobs--the sobs of utter relief
and peace. Then she disengaged herself gently, and drew herself away,
something of that first ecstasy dying out of her face to leave it soft
and happy beyond all words. That strange light still shone in her eyes,
and, as she moved, one thin hand retained its clinging hold on his arm,
as though some instinct of dependence influenced her involuntarily. She
was dressed, not as the other girls had been, in a light summer jacket,
but in a long cloak, and as she drew it about her with the other hand,
the softest touch of colour came into her white cheek.
“My dear!” she said softly. “My dear!”
And Julian whispered hoarsely as he had whispered again and again:
“Clemmie! Clemmie!”
He made no attempt to take her in his arms again. Even the gesture with
which he laid his hand upon those clinging fingers on his sleeve was
diffident and almost tremulous; tender and reverent as no gesture of his
had ever been in all his life before. He could find no words. In her
presence everything--all the triumph, all that had seemed to him the
necessities and realities of life--seemed to have fallen away from him.
He was nothing. He had nothing! He could say nothing to her.
There was a silence; silence which for Clemence as her fingers closed
round his, and that soft colour came and went in her cheeks, breathed an
ineffable content; silence which for Julian held the blackest depths of
self-revelation and self-contempt. It was broken at last by Clemence.
“Is it done, dear?” she said gently.
Julian’s hand turned cold in hers, and his eyes fell away from her face.
“Not--not yet, Clemmie!” he faltered wretchedly. “I--I came to tell
you--to tell you that----”
“That you are going to do it? That you are going to do it? My dear, my
dear, you mean that? Oh, you mean that, don’t you?”
She had not raised her voice or changed her pose, but that touch upon his
arm had become a close, convulsive grip, and even the clutch of the worn,
blanched hand upon her cloak witnessed to the agony of supplication with
which every nerve was strained and quivering. Her low voice thrilled and
vibrated with it; her white face, to which his first words had brought a
look of heart-sick disappointment, was an embodied prayer. He could not
answer on the instant; it cut him like a lash; and she went on rapidly,
her low, beseeching voice breaking and trembling with the intense
feeling that flickered on her face like a light.
“Julian, for my sake, for your wife’s sake, dear! I love you so! I--I
need you so! Don’t part us any longer! If it was for your good, if
it was to make you happy, there’s nothing I would not face, and face
cheerfully--ah, you know that, don’t you? But you’re doing wrong, and I
think of it always, and it makes the loneliness so that I can’t bear it.
Oh, I can’t bear it!”
She broke suddenly into low shuddering sobs and tears, and her head
fell forward helplessly on to his breast, though she still kept her
convulsive hold upon his arm. He put his other arm round her and drew her
towards him, and as he did so he seemed to realise with a kind of double
consciousness the course he would take and its utter contemptibility.
“Don’t, Clemmie dear! Don’t! don’t!” he said in a broken, uneven voice.
“It’s all right, dear! I’m going to do it! I came to tell you so! It’s
all right!”
“You’re going to--tell her?”
“I am, Clemence! I promise you I am! Only--only not for a week or two.
There’s--there’s something I must wait for!”
“But you are going to? You are? You are?”
“On my--on my soul, yes, Clemence!”
There was a moment’s silence, broken only by her low, tremulous sobs;
then these too died away. At last, with a long sighing breath, she raised
herself and looked into his pale, miserable face, with her own quiet and
exhausted.
“Must you wait?” she said, with an indescribable accent on the first
bitter word. “Must you?”
“I--I must, dear!” he said desperately, his eyes trying wretchedly to
avoid hers. “It shan’t be long, I promise you; but I must wait just a
little longer!”
She paused a moment, still looking into his face. Then, with a sudden
light in her eyes, she made a slight movement as though she would have
bent his head down that she might murmur in his ear. She stopped herself,
however, and there settled down upon her face a look of unutterable
sadness. By Julian, in his helpless misery of self-contempt, the gesture
had passed utterly unheeded.
“Don’t let it be much longer, dear!” she said. “Good night!”
Julian caught at the last word as though it gave him some sort of chance
of restoring his writhing self-respect.
“Good night!” he echoed. “Not yet, Clemence! I’m going to see you home,
of course!”
But Clemence shook her head.
“No!” she said steadfastly, “no, dear!” Something in her tone,
something in the touch she laid upon him, took from him all power of
self-assertion, all power of resistance to her will. She drew his head
towards her now, kissed him softly on the forehead, and then turned and
went away down the street, leaving him alone.