SHE had never seen his face look quite so strange, not even on that mad
day in the stuffy Bloomsbury house when she helped him throw his things
into the bag and he whispered hoarsely that “they” were after him. She
was puzzled by the intensity of his expression. He didn’t love her, he
was tired, anxious to be rid of her. That discovery of the contemptible
woman in brown should have been propitious for him. And yet he seemed
furious, and, more than that, afraid.
She had meant to calmly tell the truth. But two things froze the truth
that lay ready on her tongue. She was afraid of him: he was a mere
violent physical brute, in the mood to stamp on her, to drive his fist
into her face: that was what it had come to--her tender, first romance.
Her weak woman’s cowardice made her shiver with apprehension under her
sweeping folds of cashmere. And then, apart from fear, she couldn’t
tell him. She didn’t want him to know she knew.
It was humiliating, mortifying, delightful. She rapidly read her own
heart. She loved him still. There was no solution. The common, dowdy
woman that he had just left had no power to part them. She realized
with fear, with self-reproach, with bitter shame, yet with relief, that
any mere bodily sin he might commit was pardonable. Was there, then,
no cardinal offense? Was she to go on loving in this despicable way
until the very end?
She looked up from the book, smiling, yawning.
There was cunning in her big clear eyes, the cunning which even the
frankest woman on earth has in reserve: handed down to her through
generations of oppressed women, who have always been slaves.
Slaves! The word suddenly came; she couldn’t have told why. And while
she sat back in the chair, chin up, eyes half afraid, mouth stiffly
smiling, she was thinking scornfully that woman always had been and
always would be slaves. They liked to be slaves. All this strident talk
about freedom and rights was froth, propounded by those imbittered free
women who hadn’t succeeded in finding a master.
“You said you were not coming back to dinner,” she said gayly, and then
grew deadly pale as she suddenly remembered that he had said something
about not coming back all night, if a certain business he had in hand
took an anxious turn. He had said that he might be called away to
Liverpool. Her lip curled. Liverpool! Kennington, more likely! That
hat, that terrible gown, had looked like Kennington. Then she rallied.
“You said you were not coming back to dinner, so I--I dined: a woman’s
dinner, you know--an egg, some cake, and three cups of tea.”
“No lies!” he returned savagely. “What were you doing half an hour ago?
An egg! Tea! There was a plate of rump-steak in front of you at the
restaurant.”
She was by this time thoroughly steadied to hard, deliberate lying. She
didn’t want to lose him. She didn’t mean to hand him over publicly to
that woman. She loved him. She’d keep the semblance of him anyhow.
All her frenzied watching; all her deplorable spying; all her fierce
assurance that unfaithfulness on his part would free her soul--ended in
this. She was lying, in order to keep him.
That he had been unfaithful she was certain; his attitude toward the
woman spoke of nothing else. It was an old entanglement, purged of all
piquancy, all intensity. It had become a matter of course.
“You don’t suppose I would go out and dine alone? Steak! I never touch
it.”
“You never do,” he said ponderingly; then added, “but that was, no
doubt, part of your devilish, ingenious scheming, to throw dust in my
eyes.”
“I don’t understand, I really don’t,” she persisted, with the firmness
and absolute blankness of the deeply-committed liar. “Be a little more
clear.”
“You were there. I saw you,” he stormed, moving his hands about
nervously. “Why! You remember looking at me. You remember--her?”
“Her?”
“The woman with me. She was dressed in brown.”
“I hate brown. What woman?”
“You haven’t the impudence to stick to it that you weren’t there--with
a rump steak and a bottle of wine?”
“It doesn’t sound at all inviting--at all like me. My dear boy!” She
leapt up, and tremblingly hung her arms about his stubborn neck. “It
was a delusion--you saw my double.”
“Double be----”
“You must tell me about that woman,” she broke in, smiling falsely, her
teeth, beneath her curled-back lips, white and cruel in their
regularity and soundness. “You’ve committed yourself. Who was she? A
business connection--a person from--Liverpool? Though you’ve never
asserted that it was politic for you to keep in with the women--as it
is for me to appease the men.”
He pushed her away from him by a reckless blow on the chest.
“Curse you!” he said with fury. “You’re like a cat--all claws, all
purr. You double like a cat. I saw one chased by a dog through some
front gardens the other day. She doubled behind some shrubs, and he
lost her.”
She had one hand on her chest, where it throbbed with his fist. She was
smiling still; a demoniacal smile, but with the most hopeless outraged
tenderness behind it.
“There are no front gardens in Piccadilly,” she said, looking at him
oddly. “You must have been in the suburbs.”
He sat down. He was biting his nails fitfully, and looking up at her
from time to time with a sullen, suspicious glance.
“I’ll be even with you yet,” he said threateningly. “You _were_ there.”
“I wasn’t.”
“You’ll swear?”
“Women don’t swear. I wasn’t. I haven’t been out of the flat all day.
Go into the bedroom, if you don’t believe me. Look at my shoes--all in
nice shiny rows. Look at my gowns, all tidily on the pegs. By the way,
what did she wear?”
“Brown,” he returned mechanically.
“Pooh! We’ll come to her later on. I mean the other--the one you
mistook for me.”
“You wore a violet kind of thing, with black stuff sewn on it,” he
persisted. “There were violet feathers in your hat. They nodded at me
like imps when you got up and slipped away. By Jove! I won’t be fooled
like this----”
“Don’t be absurd. Did you ever see me in violet? Think.”
The dress had only come from the tailor’s that morning. She watched him
triumphantly.
“Perhaps not--but I never notice what you wear.”
“You never do,” she made answer sadly; and then she jumped up, again
meaning to kiss him, but he angrily waved her back.
“It was a very curious thing,” she said steadily, and smiling into his
angry, infuriated face. “It’s rather dree to know one has a double. I
hope you’re convinced now. If not, go into the next room. See if you
can find a violet gown. Shall we go together and hunt?”
“You’ll swear you weren’t there?”
“I’ve told you I wasn’t--I’m tired of telling. Now, about this woman?”
“Never mind who she was. It’s not your affair.”
“But----”
“I’ve given you my definition of married fidelity,” he said, with an
ugly, puzzling grin full on her quivering face. “Nothing matters--so
long as the other one doesn’t find out. Find out--if you dare! If I
ever see--your double--dogging me again, I’ll turn round in the streets
and knock her down. Do you understand?”
“I hear--and I’m very sorry for the poor thing. I can only hope that
she won’t cross your path, but--it’s nothing to me. Is it?”
He was out of the room, out of the flat before her lips closed after
the mocking words. She fell back, shaking with degradation. She knew
perfectly well that he would not return that night. She might drop her
mask, spread the accusing violet gown on the bed, plant her dusty shoes
in the middle of the room. She might cry her fill--but where was the
good of that? Tears were bad diplomacy at the best of times. She was
worn out enough by the burning shame of the glib lies she had been
reeling off.
He would not come back that night. He had returned to--_her_--the brown
person. Perhaps she had been waiting outside all the time. She got up,
ran into the other room, began to feverishly unfasten her gown with one
hand, while with the other she flung back the door of the wardrobe. She
would follow them. If he saw her, knocked her down--so well! She would
follow them--to the very door. Then she dropt down on the bed,
shaking her head mournfully, twisting her hands. She wouldn’t
follow--all motive for following was gone. She had been waiting,
watching all these degrading weeks for the advent of a woman. The woman
had come. She had believed that she would bring freedom in her hands.
But she hadn’t; no woman ever would. It needed a subtler force to kill
her love for that villain. She didn’t even feel jealous because he had
gone away with her rival. She was contemptuous of him because her rival
was so uninteresting--that was about all. Her strongest feeling was one
of being stunned--as if he had struck her on the head, instead of on
the breast. She didn’t mind much. She was relieved, immensely relieved,
that it was no longer necessary to watch--to crawl stealthily about the
streets like an unclean animal of prey. She only hoped that he would
come back in the morning--and in a good temper. One must learn to wink
at things.
As she sat on the bed, shaking her head in a foolish, silly fashion,
and smiling at the wall with the self-satisfied air of a person mildly
and harmlessly distraught, the outer door of the flat opened. She
jumped up with a wild hope, a sick dread. She gave the one essential
look in the glass, raised her hot fingers mechanically to her crumpled
hair, and went back to the drawing-room.
Sutton was standing in the middle of it, his head bent in a listening
way.
“Oh!” she said stiffly, with an air of collapse. “You!”
He did not answer, only stared at her. His face was aflame with some
unusual emotion. It looked like a Christmas card--one of those
things--transparencies--which admit a ruddy, steady light in places
where you hold them up before a lamp.
“Edred has gone out,” she continued with abrupt impulse, “and I--I’m
going out too.”
“Where?”
“Anywhere. The pit of a theater, perhaps; he used to take me.”
He was looking at her fixedly, as well he might. Her voice, her face,
her attitude were reckless.
“Will you come to a music-hall with me?”
She looked at him. He read her contempt for him; it was steady behind
the reckless mask. But he didn’t care. For many months he had been
playing for this night.
“Wait. One moment,” she said in a staccato fashion. “I’ll put on my
long cloak--that’s all.”
She whisked through the door and was back in a moment, wrapped to her
ankles in the garment which Edred had bought for her on that fairy
summer evening--the night of the day on which she had left Jethro.
“You are going--like that?” he said musingly, as she hitched up the
tail of her gown, and plunging his hand into his pocket.
He didn’t choose his music-hall with any regard for her. He took her
somewhere--she didn’t know or care exactly where. She only knew that it
wasn’t in one of the big streets. She sat with him in the box, staring
and smiling through the performance. Nothing smote her modesty that
night. She had suddenly turned numb. Sometimes, as she stared and
smiled at the stage, she saw, not a kicking, painted woman, but a
demure, savagely respectable figure in brown. Once a dancer suddenly
changed into a big woman, mostly jacket-buttons and red-lined
petticoat, who extravagantly popped out a very long tongue, and said,
“Yer never knows nothin’, do yer?”
As the evening wore on, and she endured without flinching the risky
songs and patter, Sutton’s attitude grew more free. In the cab on the
way home he sat beside her, seeming to press her uncomfortably into the
corner.
When he unlocked the door of the flat her instinct told her at once
that Edred had not returned. Sensation came back. She suddenly felt ill
at ease. She wished from her heart that she had not gone out for the
evening with Sutton, a man she detested and despised. She looked down
at him contemptuously--a middle-aged, vacuous, little-minded, vulgar,
cunning creature: a very good example of the played-out mercantile
clerk.
“Good-night,” she said curtly.
It seemed an almost superfluous thing to say, jammed in together and
alone as they were in the flat, where a whisper almost passed through
the walls.
“Good-night,” she repeated, with sudden constraint.
“Wait a bit”--he opened the drawing-room door--“I want to talk to you.”
“I’m tired.”
“But it’s very important.”
She marveled at the remarkable change in him. He had become an
impressive figure. He absolutely commanded her, as he stood by the open
door, in his iron-gray suit. It was baggy at the knees and elbows. It
was perfectly true that he had plenty of money now; but he could not
shake off the careful habits of twenty years. He only had two new suits
a year, and he scrupulously changed his coat whenever he came indoors.
He threw out his hand and bowed--something in the way of a shop-walker.
She walked into the room, without another word of protest.
He went out again, putting his face back in his usual queer way, to
throw at her the words:
“I’ll be back in half a jiff. I’ll just put on my slippers and get my
alpaca jacket.”
When he came in again, she was sitting bolt upright on the lounge; she
had not even turned up her veil, nor unbuttoned her long gloves.
“Take off your things,” he said with ghastly jocularity. “Make yourself
at home, you know.”
Then he laughed nervously. It suddenly dawned on her that he was in a
state of great tremor. His jocular tone, his silly, vulgar
words--everything of him--jarred terribly. She reproached herself,
condemned herself again for that hideous evening of frolic at a
third-rate music-hall with such a creature.
“I’ll keep my things on,” she said firmly. “Sometimes these summer
nights are cold. It is going to rain.”
He came and sat on the other end of the lounge, and stared at her with
his unpleasant, expressionless eyes. He crossed first one leg and then
the other; he stroked and tugged at the weakly growing hair on his face.
“If you’ve anything to say,” she said crisply, “say it. It’s twenty
past twelve.”
“I’ve all night to say it in--he won’t come home.”
She nearly struck him for that free, unctuous laugh. She would have
whisked up and locked herself in her own room--but she couldn’t. Even a
mean man is commanding in moments of tremendous excitement. It was
obvious that Sutton was laboring to say something of moment; she was
impelled to sit still and let him say it.
“I don’t know where to begin,” he said helplessly, winding his
watch-chain round his finger.
“If it is business,” she said, suddenly becoming inspired with the idea
that there was some financial difficulty, and he wished to confide in
her, to break it to her, “don’t tell me. I shall not understand.”
“I never talk business with a woman,” he returned with a sneer.
“Oh! Then what do you talk?”
“The one thing of any interest. You know what--but you like to tease
me, you won’t help me out. It’s unkind to a poor beggar,” he said, with
a fearful attempt at pathos and tenderness.
Then she knew instantly what was coming, knew what had transformed him.
She was consumed with shame, with apprehension--but she could not rise
from that paralyzing lounge, could not move one step toward the door.
Like a true woman, hypocritically obtuse to the very last, she said:
“I haven’t the least idea----”
He grabbed at her hands, held them desperately.
“You know; you’ve known all along. It’s been a pretty game, hasn’t it?
You thought I didn’t see the nods you gave me over the dinner-table,
the cunning little winks behind his back.”
“I never winked in my life,” she said indignantly.
He ignored the disclaimer, and went on calmly:
“You’ve stood a good deal more than most girls would have done--a
pretty girl like you, too. He’s been a bit of a brute, hasn’t he? Upon
my word, I wonder that you have stood it so long.”
She made a second frenzied attempt to struggle up from the cushions.
She could see that he was slowly edging up, that the red glow on his
face was more pronounced, that his eyes were nearer being expressive
than they had ever been before.
“Don’t be a fool,” he said, pushing her back. “You’re not a fool;
you’re a sharp girl--you know which side your bread’s buttered. Edred
is going all to pieces; if he doesn’t look out he’ll find himself in
the dock again--with Milligan and one or two more. But I was always
prudent. I’ve made a nice little pile. I can give you every comfort.”
“I don’t know what you mean; on my word of honor I don’t,” she said
beseechingly--too utterly staggered to be angry with him.
“You don’t know! You _won’t_, you mean. You’re bent on playing a better
game. Well! there; I’ll marry you, if you like. No man can make a
fairer offer than that.”
Then, at last, she jumped up--positively, tangibly afraid of him. She
conceived the sudden extravagant idea that he had gone mad. She knew
nothing of his antecedents, she recalled a thousand foolish things that
he had done and looked and said. She firmly believed him to be subject
to attacks of mania. Her eyes expressed her fear.
“Do you think I’m off my head?” he demanded bluntly. “You look as if
you did.”
He rose too, his face becoming inflamed and furious.
“You know,” she said gently, “of course you remember--I was married to
Edred at St. Antony’s last year. You gave me away.”
He looked at her keenly. Then at last he said slowly:
“Haven’t you really found out? Do you still believe in that farce? Why
have you followed him about all these weeks? Oh! I know. I did it well,
didn’t I?” he laughed. “You behind him, I behind you, night after
night. I’m a cute chap. When I was in the City the firm always gave me
little delicate jobs like that to do. I can ferret out anything. And I
can tell you this--she’s beginning to suspect.”
“She?”
“His wife. Come. You must know--you must have known for a long time. I
found it out nearly a year ago. The little woman he dined with
to-night. I was there too. What on earth made you give the waiter half
a quid? Hadn’t you less in your pocket?”
He wasn’t mad. She was--the world was. It was a bewitched night, a
topsy-turvy universe. She wasn’t afraid of him any longer; he was sane
enough, the little wriggling, contemptible reptile. He was sane, he was
speaking the absolute truth. She sat down again.
“Tell me everything,” she said. “Please tell me everything. I thought
that woman was--but--it is I. Will you please explain--everything.”
Sutton began to explain. He seemed to enjoy the task. He sat and talked
and nursed his knee and glanced ardently, hopefully, from time to time,
at the attractive, agonized face in front of him.
“It’s a nice little complication,” he said. “Of course when Edred
married you he thought that she was dead. He’s not a fool; he wouldn’t
have walked into a trap blindfold. He married her some years ago,
before you ever met him. They had a baby. It died and she went off her
head. They took her away to the asylum. Then, after a bit, he had an
official notice that she was dead. He was jolly glad, of course; any
fellow would be. Fancy a man being tied up to a cracked wife! Well! To
cut a long story short, she wasn’t dead at all. It was somebody
else--one of the blessed bungles of the asylum. It was a regular
scandal in all the papers. She’s very much alive. She’s out, cured, as
sane as you are, except for a rum look in her eyes now and then, which
I should funk if I were her husband. He’s taken a little place for her
at Mildmay Park. He says he’s a commercial traveler. But she’s
cunning; she smells a rat.”
“And she’s his wife?” Pamela said stonily.
“I can show the register if you like. It was at a church in----”
“I don’t want proof. I believe it. I might have known it from the
first. She looks his wife. But I----”
She put up her hands and gave a short, wounded cry.
“The position’s favorable for us,” Sutton said complacently. “Of
course, you don’t care for him, a brute who strikes and bullies you.
Besides, he’ll throw you over before long. It’s getting a little too
hot for him. She suspects and you suspect. He’s afraid you’ll be
clawing each other’s faces. You see--it’s an ugly word--he’s committed
bigamy. He may be found out any day. That means----”
“I know, I know,” she said, sharply nodding her head several times;
“but I should never give him away. Never, never.”
“We needn’t send him to prison. He wouldn’t be any use to us there,”
Sutton said, with a gesture of assent. “But we can bleed him pretty
regularly. He’s in a tight corner, poor old chap. I can give him away
on the business side and you on the matrimonial.”
He laughed with relish. She said, in the most matter-of-fact way, “If
you laugh like that again, I think I shall kill you.”
“What a queer girl you are!” His voice was steady, but he made
a furtive movement toward the grate, where there were fire
irons--efficient weapons--if he wanted them. He was thinking uneasily,
in his common, literal way, that she was a big woman, that she looked
deuced queer, that a woman when her blood was up was ten times worse
than a man.
“What a queer girl you are!” he repeated rather timidly. “Do you
forgive him?”
Her head was down on her breast.
“I love him,” she said, almost sullenly.
Sutton surveyed her in silence for a moment or so: anything out of the
ordinary run of emotions struck him dumb. He had expected her to rage,
to cry, to be hysterical, and end by dropping into his ready arms.
“You might have guessed,” he said at last. “Has he ever treated you as
if you were his wife? Have any of us treated you as if you were his
wife? You are not mistress here; the very servants see how things are;
they never come to you for orders. The manager grins openly in your
face.”
“Yes,” she said thoughtfully, thinking it all over and remembering a
thousand damning incidents.
“Why,” Sutton went on, “if you had been his wife, he would have kicked
Milligan out of the place long ago; he would have kicked us all out.
Where have your eyes been, my dear girl? Think! Did any of those men
bring their wives or sisters?”
She shook her fair, dull head: it seemed to sink lower on her breast as
Sutton went fluently on:
“This flat is a bachelor establishment; he and I are the tenants.
If you were his wife I shouldn’t be here; the place is only a bandbox.
I’ll take you to the church where they were married to-morrow morning;
you shall see the register.”
“I don’t want to see it. I know that woman is his wife. I should have
known it from the first, when I saw her hanging on his arm in the
Strand. She is his wife. But I? What am I?”
Sutton said:
“Do you remember the night when Milligan came here with a lady?”
A queer expression of distaste crossed her white face. She remembered.
There had been a quarrel between her and Edred--one of the usual sharp
disputes. She had reproached him for bringing only men to the flat. She
remembered her quick, foaming flood of reproach and invective in answer
to his cold sneers. She remembered that when she stopped, panting for
breath, he had said:
“Well, is that all? Good Heavens! how you women can jaw!”
That night Milligan had brought Lady Milligan with him to dinner. When
they had gone Edred asked her, with an ugly look, if she were satisfied
now. “What more did she want?”
Lady Milligan! A dark young girl, with a tightly-curled fringe like a
door mat, a half dirty blouse, red hands. She remembered.
“Yes, Lady Milligan,” she said to Sutton. “A vulgar woman; but what
could one expect? She used to serve in a tobacconist’s shop.”
Sutton laughed.
“Lady Milligan,” he said, “is nearly fifty; a very religious, proper
woman. Do you understand?”
“Oh!” she breathed, seeming to collapse with this added indignity of
Edred’s. “Yes. I understand. Spare me any more confirming proofs.”
She hid her face in the sofa-cushions, her shame choking her. Sutton
put his hand on her shoulder.
“Don’t be so upset,” he said, with a pompous, condescending attempt at
comfort. “You didn’t know. You couldn’t help it. It will be all right.
I’ll marry you myself. There shall be no hanky-panky this time.”
She started up as if his hand had been the thin lash of a whip through
her cloak.
“Don’t touch me! Marry you! It is impossible for anyone like you to
understand. You don’t know how near I am to desperate crime--only I am
a coward. That makes you safe--I am a coward. I wish Edred would come
home. If only I knew where to find him!”
“The address is in my pocket-book,” he sneered. “But you can’t be
serious. What do you want him for? You can’t alter things. If you nag
at him, he’ll only laugh, or hit you.”
“If he would only come back,” she moaned. “If I could touch him, see
him, speak to him. I feel so alone, so incapable and miserable.”
“You want to have it out with him?”
“I want him,” she returned simply.
Then Sutton lost his temper.
“You are an idiot,” he said flatly. “I make you a good offer; not many
men would make it, and you can only----”
She laughed contemptuously, looking full in his eyes.
“You droll, contemptible creature,” she said with limitless scorn. “Of
course you don’t understand. How should you? I am going out--never mind
where. I am coming back--or I am not--according to my mood. You needn’t
be certain of anything--but the one thing: I don’t intend to marry
_you!_”
She whirled out of the room before he could collect his startled wits.
She was out of the flat and half down the stairs before he could stop
her.
The vast, high house was dark. She ran down the familiar stone steps,
drew the long bolts of the entrance door. As she opened it, she heard
the patter of slippers, a little down at heel, covering the flights;
heard a hoarse, cautious voice cry out down the black shoot of the
quiet staircase.
“Pamela! Come back! Don’t be a fool! Don’t lose your head like this!”
Her only answer was another strident laugh. The door thudded after her.
She stood alone in the night--a chilly night, with a spray of rain.
She stood facing the black mass of the Park.
She swept on westward. After a while she grew cool, practical enough to
put her hand in her pocket and feel if she had her purse. It was there,
lying heavy at the bottom. Her head was on fire, her sore heart beat
rapidly. She went on trying to formulate her life as the day must see
it. Dawn meant shame, ridicule, curiosity. She couldn’t walk London
in thin shoes with heavily jetted toes, in a cloak bordered with
swansdown and a long tea-gown.
What should she do when dawn came? She tried to be cool, practical. She
had always been practical; women who earn their own bread are compelled
to be. She walked on very quickly. The streets were almost empty. She
met with no annoyance. Yet she felt that this was the measure of her
degradation--this night alone under the London stars. What should she
do? She knew what she wanted to do. Go back; ignore everything. Yes,
she wanted that. She kept lashing herself with fierce self-reproach.
She called herself shameless, spiritless, vicious. But she couldn’t
help it. She wanted to go back--to breakfast with him as usual, to say
nothing. She loved him. That terrible cankering love! Would nothing
destroy it?
At Sloane Street she turned down, making her way instinctively, like
all hopeless, desolate creatures, to the river. She walked along and
along, not noticing distance, not feeling the soreness of her
lightly-shod feet, until she came to Chelsea.
She crossed the road and walked closely by the houses in Cheyne Walk.
She went by Oakley Street, by Cheyne Row, by the red blocks of flats
beyond, and by the Hospital, where lights still burned in certain
windows. At the corner of Beaufort Street she stopped. What on earth
was the good of going on?
A quick, frightened feminine cry, a hoarse curse from a man, startled
her, and she stumbled to the pavement, conscious all in a moment
that a hansom had nearly knocked her down. It stopped at a house with a
heavy door painted white. As she stood there by the railings, unsteady,
uncertain, a woman jumped from the hansom and opened the gate of that
house.
She had a long cloak too. Beneath it hung a soft mass of black net
which flashed with steel. Their eyes met; the eyes of these two women
on the pavement. The hansom rattled off. The lights in the house,
except one on the ground floor, were out. The pavements wound away, wet
and empty. Their eyes met. Pamela forced a smile, put out her hand in a
conventional way.
“Is it really Mrs. Clutton?” she said, with an artificial accent, as if
it were broad day and Bond Street.
“Pamela! Pamela! Really? But what are you doing alone? Where is Mr.
Jayne?”
The little dark, vivacious woman’s eyes contracted as they rested on
this wild figure with the wretched, haggard face, the clown-like smile.
Pamela said nothing. She began to cry in a low, terrified fashion, like
a lost child. The other took her by the shoulder and led her up the
flagged path to the door.