Up and down the two rooms she paced, day and night, her face set, her hands clenched, talking aloud to herself sometimes, sometimes silent, always thinking, thinking, thinking of Joyselle.
Had he ceased to love her, or was it merely a pose, or—ten thousand theories occurred to her, to drive her perilously near madness in her solitude. Things he had done, words he had said, characteristics she had observed in him, all these things flashed into her mind, upsetting and confirming each and every theory with an utter lack of logic, but with pitiless conclusiveness.
And the longer she thought the more hopeless things grew. Théo himself she dismissed with furious impatience; his letters remained unopened, an affectionate wire of congratulation on Tommy's improvement she did not answer. He and everyone else were swept aside by the flood of emotional analysis regarding Joyselle that, in its headlong course, threatened to carry her reason with it.
"If I had been married," she thought over and over again with cruel shrewdness, "things—would have been different, and then he could not have escaped."
She wrote to Joyselle long letters full of incoherent self-accusations, and made appeals for pity, but she knew that he would not answer her, and so burned the letters.
She could not eat; did not even try, and the little sleep she got from sheer exhaustion, after tramping up and down for hours, was heavy and unrestful. Lady Kingsmead came to her door once or twice, but was not allowed to enter, and went away unprotesting. And then, the third morning, Dr. Long insisted on seeing her.
"Humph! Tired, are you? You look it. Tommy is going to Margate to-morrow. You had better go too."
"Is my mother going?"
"No. Nurse is taking him. It will do him good—and you. Is anything specific the matter?"
She looked at him and shook her head. "I am tired," she repeated.