She fingered the fringe of the table-cover as she glanced up at the looking-glass, furtively.
“And it’s a shock he wants—a shock——He wants tearing up—by the roots——” Then her voice rose. “Ah, but I can’t hurt him,” she cried defiantly. “I can’t. You can’t make me.”
The eyes in the glass were alive with passion.
“If it isn’t you it’ll be some one else—some beast of a woman who won’t care how she hurts him. It’s got to be you.”
At that she sprang up from the table to escape the intolerable domination. But everywhere there were looking-glasses. She turned panic-stricken from herself a yard away from her in the long wardrobe, to the mantelpiece reflecting Dresden figures and herself, and, caught from the wardrobe, herself again, and again, and yet again, in an unending reduplication of gay dressing-gown and ashy face. For she might turn where she would, she might crush out the candle-flames, and, flung down upon her bed, cover her eyes with her hair and her desperate, scorched hands; but she could not escape from herself, from the inquisition of her own awakened soul.
CHAPTER XXVIII
In the half light of the third hour she rose, freshened her eyes with cold water and crept out of the creaky house into the grey midsummer world.
The birds were half awake, chirruping, as it seemed in that stillness, loud and shrill, tuning up for the concert that was to come; but the trees had still their motionless carved night-look, and the hedges and fields were as fast as if the thick film of dew spread over them were a visible spell.
In spite of the burning season the air was cold, with the dank cold of the smallest hours, when virtue goes out of beast and man alike, in sleep that is half at one with its exemplar death.