Derek, on his part, watched her, with the fascination with which we watch a man performing some strange feat of skill—from whom first one support, and then another, and then another, falls away, until he is left with nothing to uphold him, perilously, frightfully alone.
When at length the knowledge of what had occurred came over her, Diane looked round the familiar room, as though to bring her senses back out of the realm of the incredible. When her eyes rested on him it was simply to include him among the common facts of earth after this excursion into the impossible. She said nothing, and her face was blank; but the little gesture of the hands—the little limp French gesture: the sudden lift, the sudden drop, the soft, tired sound, as the arms fell against the sides—implied fatality, finality, inexplicability, and an infinite weariness of created things.
XIV
"Do you think he did—shoot himself?"
They continued to stand staring into each other's eyes—the width of the room between them. A red azalea on the long mahogany table, strewn with books, separated them by its fierce splash of color. The apathy of Diane's voice was not that of worn-out emotion, but of emotion which finds no adequate tones. The very way in which her inquiry ignored all other subjects between them had its poignancy.
"What do you think?"
"Oh, I suppose he did. Every one says so; then why shouldn't it be true? If it were, it would only be of a piece with all the rest."
"I reminded you last night that he had other troubles besides—besides—"