She shivered a little as she sat there in her nightdress. In the small hours of the morning in early summer it is always cold. She would have been much warmer in bed; she really ought to have been in bed; but the bed had not been slept in. It stood there in one corner of the room, looking white and restful. It seemed to be calling her, “Come to me; sleep and forget it—sleep and forget it.” On the little table at the foot of the bed was the pile of books and newspapers that had slowly accumulated. She had always been interested in the world and in the things others did and thought.
A little impulse that came to her from nowhere made her pick up the newspaper that lay on the top of the pile. It would do to fill her mind and to keep her thoughts steady until the morning came. Her eyes ached, and the candles flickered on the dressing-table. Her brain seemed to her as a pool into which some thoughtless child that did what he liked had flung a stone, starting circle after circle, circles that grew and grew, spreading to the farther edge, and sobbing away into nothing because they could go no farther. Yet she read, and knew nothing of what she read, till one sentence seemed to shine brighter than the rest.
“The body had probably been in the water for several days.”
She stood up quickly, with a little gasp, and let the newspaper fall to the ground. For her brain, burning with torture and want of sleep, had suddenly flashed out a merciless, truthful, coloured illustration to that sentence. She steadied herself in a moment. Then she held up her hands and looked at them. “Will they turn like that?” she was asking herself. She shivered, and the muscles of her face contracted a little.
She was bending now over the mantelpiece. Her arms and her burning forehead rested upon it, and her thoughts went stealing away through the passages and rooms of the quiet old house. In the room next to hers slept stolid respectability. She loved him and her, as the accident of parentage makes love. But she must leave them. How she hated to hurt those two, those kind, misunderstanding parents, with their old ideas, and their love for her ever fresh! No, she could not leave them, she could not leave them. “You will leave them at dawn,” said the thing that was stronger than herself.
And her thoughts stood mutely listening outside the door of the room where Claud lay. “Are you asleep?” she whispered. Or was he lying awake and thinking, as she thought, of the night before? It all came back to her so easily,—the wistful refrain that lingered softly on the strings, the brilliant lights and the brilliant crowd, and suddenly the dim garden outside the ball-room. She could see him standing there; she could hear him speaking. No, she could never, never leave him. “You will leave him at dawn,” said the thing that was stronger than herself.
And the dawn had come now.
She drew up the blind, and opened the window softly. The sky was one dull grey but for the beauty in the east. A fresh, cool wind had awakened; and she could hear the chirrup, chirrup of waking birds. And she looked down the valley and saw the hurrying, winding river, with the grey mists hovering upon it. “River,” she said in a whisper, “take me to the sea. Take me to a sea that has no shores, that will flow for ever, bearing me farther and farther away from this.”
She crept down the stairs, bare-footed, and into the drawing-room. She drew back the heavy curtains from the windows that opened down to the ground. Outside was the terraced garden that sloped down to the edge of the river. Her hand was on the bolt of the window.
Suddenly she heard quick footsteps coming down the passage. In a moment she had hidden herself behind the screen that stood against the door. She knew those footsteps. Involuntarily her hands linked tightly together, and her breath came quickly.