The tears sprang to Ellinor’s eyes. Sir David turned round and seemed to become again aware of her presence.
“No, no,” he said, “that is ungrateful.” He took her hand. “She brought us sunshine,” he said.
But she missed from his pressure the tremulous touch of passion; she missed from his eyes that flame she had shrunk from and that now her heart would always hunger for. Pure kindness, mild sadness—what could her enkindled soul make now of such gifts as these? With an inarticulate sound she drew her fingers from his clasp; and, turning, fled downstairs again and back to her room.
A taper was burning on her writing table, and in its small meek circle of light a bowl of monthly roses displayed their innocent pink beauty. The latticed casement was thrown open. In the square of sky a single silver star pointed the illimitable distance. From the Herb-Garden below rose gushes of aromatic airs, as, from some secret cloister by night the voices of the dedicated rise and fall. Vaguely, in her seething misery, she seemed to recognise the special essence of the new plant giving to the cool night the sweetness accumulated during the long, hot hours of the day.
She sat down on the narrow bed, folded her hands on her lap and stared dully forth at the square of sky and the single star. Presently, almost without her own consciousness, her bosom began to heave with long sighs and tears to course down her cheeks. Where was now the strength, the indifference to passing events which she boasted her long battle with life had given her? Gone, gone at the first touch of passion! Throughout a sordid marriage she had remained virgin of heart, she had kept the virgin’s peace—and now?
Alternations of pride and despair broke over her like waves, salt and bitter as her own tears. How happy they had been! And the unknown fiend, jealousy, had urged her to break the still current of that sweet, restful half-unwitting happiness of their life all three together—a current flowing, she had told herself with conviction, to a full tide of unimaginable bliss.
My God, how he had looked at her only that night! And it was in that pearl of moments that she had thrust his past back upon him and bade him, with her precious, new-found power, read the letter that should never have been opened. The perfect rose had been within her grasp. It was her own hand that had flung it in the dust.
Master Simon, still shaking his head and muttering disapproval, went slowly back to his laboratory.
“The cunning jade!” he was grumbling, “she’s no more ill than I am. Or if she be, a pretty business we shall have with her—a fine lady with vapours, and megrims, and tantrums! I’ve not forgotten the ways of them...!”
But here an illuminating idea flashed upon his brain. He stopped at the corner of a passage, cocking his head like an old grey jackdaw. “Eh, but a fine lady in her tantrums.... What a test for the virtues of my paragon herb!”