" ...keep a stiff upper lip."
Claire Robson did not need this admonition from Mrs. Condor.
There were also moments of hectic retrospection. Incidents old but vital came surging over Claire in a flood-tide. Looking back, it seemed as if no circumstance was too trivial but that it yielded up some fragment which fitted into the intricate pattern of her life. She had thought of this life of hers always in terms of uneventfulness, mistaking mere incident for emotional experience. But she was surprised to discover what depths she had sounded, what heights she had scaled in the solitary excursions that her spirit had chanced.
People came and went like noonday ghosts—Mrs. Finnegan, Nellie Holmes, Mrs. Towne, Doctor Stoddard. Claire felt their personalities moving about her, but the wings of Death cast too heavy a shadow for her to do more than sense their presence.
Only Danilo's passionately sneering face had the faculty of bringing Claire up with a round turn to a sudden realization that she had escaped only temporarily into a world of unrealities. It was as if the payment on a note had been suspended with refined cruelty—the day of reckoning futilely postponed.
When she thought of him it was with a quickening of the heart, a swooning fear, a feeling of dreadful nausea. Afraid! She knew the meaning of this word now.
Lily Condor ran in again the day before the concert.
"I called at Danilo's office to-day," she said, "just out of sheer curiosity.... I don't know ... perhaps it would be just as well if we didn't go through with this farce of doing a turn to-morrow night.... What do you think? I could pretend that I was ill?"
"Why?... What is it? Do you think...."