'What a mockery!' he muttered aloud. 'What a hideous mockery!'
He was touched with sudden pity. Perhaps this woman had been born with the same spirit of rebellion as Elise. Perhaps her poor mind had never been developed, and so she had succumbed to the current of circumstance. She might have been the plaything of environment. The wound in his head was hurting again, and he covered the scar with his moist hand. Horrible as it seemed, this creature had brought Elise to him once more—Elise, and everything she meant. He wanted to cry out her name. His hands were stretched forward as if they could bridge the sea between them.
Like a man emerging from a trance, he looked dreamily about him—at the street running with streams of water—at the silent theatre—at the woman. A weakness came over him, and his pulses were fluttering and unsteady.
A peddler of umbrellas passed, and Selwyn purchased one for a dollar.
'Won't you take this?' he asked, stepping over to the woman, who cringed nervously. 'It is raining hard, and you will need it.'
She took the thing, and looked up at him wonderingly, like a child that has received a caress where it expected a blow.
'Say,' she said, in a queer nasal whine, 'I thought you was a devil when I seen you a minute ago. Honest—you frightened me.'
He said nothing.
'Why'—there was a weak quaver in her whine, and she caught his wrist with her hand—'why, you're kind—and I thought you was a devil. Gee! ain't it funny?'
With a shrill laugh that set his teeth on edge, she put up the umbrella and walked out into the rain. And only a passing policeman saw, by the light of a lamp, that her eyes were glistening.