THAIR CONGRATULATES
FLORENCE sat down in the window-seat in the dusky hall. The diamond
panes of milky glass let in a misty light. She drew the drapery of the
dark curtains around her, the better to insure against interruption. The
house was silent at that long hour of the afternoon when all the day’s
processes seem to stand still, and heart and brain alike grow torpid.
She waited, as still as her still surroundings, a piece with the dull
curtain, until an opening door should reanimate her to living.
At the sound of an approaching step—was it an hour or a day she had kept
her post?—she started nervously. Through the slightly parted curtains
she watched the stair-turn anxiously. That long, dangling, masculine
figure was at least not Mrs. Budd. She sighed relief. It was Thair. He
came on with his elegant slouch, turning down the hall toward the window
embrasure, stopped a moment on the threshold of the morning-room,
looking in with a questing turn of his long neck, strolled on, craning
at the alcove curtains.
Florence thrust them back. Evidently it was not she he was looking for.
He was surprised, and something more, hardly curious, but a look that
harked back to what had been revealed him on the terrace.
“I am,” he explained to her, “in search of the young madam.” He added
with a considerative smile, “Our last ride together—if _she_ has
anything to say about it.”
Her face showed an odd mingling of distress and relief.
“But you will have to wait. She can’t be disturbed now.”
“Well”—he dawdled over it a minute—“but she _will_ be disturbed. _I’ll_
wait, of course; but will—Mrs. Budd?” He brought it out with the
faintest embarrassment.
Florence looked at him, considering.
“It’s just what she never _will_ do,” he said. “She’ll expect to see us
off.”
Her answer was the dismayed sound that escaped her lips. She put her
hand out with a gesture that warned him back. They were like a small
secret conclave, shut in their alcove behind the curtains, stilled in
the middle of their plots.
A door down the hall had softly closed. They saw Julia stand for a
moment outside the door of Longacre’s room. Then she turned and came
slowly along the hall. She was coming down upon them, and with every
step she overwhelmed them more. Such a strange Julia, so pale, so
unimperious, with all her sparkle stilled! Yet she shone! Her great
dilated eyes, her face, dawning on them, glimmering by, looked aghast
with happiness.
Florence was trembling. Her eyes were on the narrow slit between the
curtains where that vision of Julia had passed. She could not speak
immediately when she finally turned to Thair. He was looking at her with
the oddest possible expression.
“Well, it doesn’t matter about Mrs. Budd _now_,” he said. His usually
smooth voice sounded uneven. “She’s done for!”
At this the lines in her forehead grew deep. “If one could only make it
easier for her! It is _dreadful_! But—didn’t you see, just now?—it was
the only thing to do!”
“Dear girl,” he earnestly assured her, “that you think so is enough for
me! But you can’t show it to _her_, poor lady!”
She looked at him with a sudden flash. “_You_ could make it easier.”
[Illustration: “_Such a strange Julia!_”]
“I?” He was blank.
“If she thought—if she knew that some other hope she may have had for
Julia—was—couldn’t you make her know?”
At this he fixed her with his old diabolical glint.
“You mean I could congratulate her—heartily?”
Her answering smile was wan. She left it to him.
He looked back at her once as he went down the stair.
She held herself still until he was out of hearing. Then, on tiptoe, she
stole down the hall to the door, and hesitated with beating heart. There
was nothing in the world she so dreaded, nothing she so much wanted, as
to see Longacre, to hear his voice. She slipped into the room, expecting
to find it somehow extraordinarily changed, revolutionized. There was a
change. It was in the man who lay upon the bed.
He lay, eyes closed, face quiet. But, ah, asleep! The strong structure
of the face came out startling in its emaciation. She looked at that
face, dwelt upon it, saw in the salient lines something she had been
seeking since she had known it. Dared she think this had come through
her—the last thing she had given him! She waited to see those obstinate
lids unclose.
She had come so lightly he had not heard her. She would not for the
world have spoken, but if she looked at him—he _must_ know she was
looking at him!
Then, as he lay so still, not a muscle of the sensitive mouth moving,
breathing lightly, regularly, it came upon her that he wished her to
suppose him asleep.
A faint, cold breath ran in the nerves of her body. She turned her head
quickly away, as though, through their closed lids, his waking eyes
could spy on her.
She had thought, child-blind, not of friendship, not of recognition for
what she had spent, but of just that last bitter-sweet confidence when
he would tell her, show her without words, perhaps, how much this new
happiness would be to him. And he hid it from her!
Well, he was right. How impossible anything else was! There were
barriers of gratitude—yes, and higher yet than those—barriers she
herself had reared between them!
She stood, hands limply dropped, head bent. She saw shadows of jessamine
leaves moving like fine, gray fingers on the sunny floor.
She had no more right in that room than the veriest stranger.
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