It seemed to her so natural, so reasonable, that he should desert her when this siren with the melting eyes, the caressing laugh, should beckon him; for who could have resisted her? Not any man who had once loved her.
Nell's head moved slowly from side to side, like that of an animal stricken to death. Her throat had grown tight, her eyes were hot and burning, the sound, as of the plash of waves, sang in her ears; but she could not cry. It seemed to her that she would never be able to cry again. She looked vaguely at the other women as they walked at the far end of the terrace, and she shivered as if with bodily fear. There was something terrible, Circe-like, to her in the face, the movements, the very voice of this woman who had taken Drake from her.
Presently the two exquisitely dressed figures passed into the house, and Nell rose, steadying herself by the pedestal. As she did so, she looked up. A streak of light shot right across the statue, and the cruel face with its leering eyes seemed to smile down upon her mockingly, jeeringly, and she actually shrank, as if she dreaded to hear the satyr lips shoot some evil gibe at her.
And all the while the music, a waltz of Waldteufel's, soft and ravishing and seductive, floated out to her, and mocked her with the memory of the happiness that had been hers but an hour—half an hour ago. She staggered to the edge of the terrace and leaned her head on her hands, and, closing her eyes, tried hard to persuade herself that it was only a dream; just a dream, from which she should wake shuddering at the unreal misery one moment, then laughing at its unreality the next.
But it was true. The dream had been the happiness of the last few weeks, and this was the awakening.
Before her mental vision passed, like a panorama, the days which the gods had given her—that they might punish her all the more cruelly for daring to be so happy.
Yes; how often had she asked herself what right she, Nell of Shorne Mills, had to so much joy? What had she done to deserve it?
She remembered now how, sometimes, she had been terrified by the intensity of her joy. That day Drake had told her that he loved her; the morning he had taken her in his arms and kissed her; the night he had looked down into her eyes and sworn that no man in all the world loved any woman as he loved her. She had not deserved it, had no right to it, and God had punished her for her presumption in daring to be so happy.
But now what was she to do?
She asked the question with a kind of despair.