Later in the evening, as she sat, flushed, tremulous, utterly joyful over Roger's telegram, she considered the manner of her exit and was shocked at herself.
"I don't know what possessed me," said Elsbeth apologetically. "And if I had only known. It was unladylike—it was unwomanly—it was unchristian." She shook her head at her mild self in the glass. "But she made me so angry! If I'd only known that this was coming!" She fingered the pink envelope. "She'll think I knew. She'll always think I knew. And then to say what I did? It was unpardonable.
"But I was right, all the same," cried Elsbeth incorrigibly; "and I don't care. I'm glad I said it—I'm glad—I'm glad!"
CHAPTER XLVII
The sun slid over the edge of the sweating earth. Its red-hot plunge into the sea behind the hills was almost audible. The black cloud, fuming up from its setting-place, was as the steam of the collision. In great clots and coils it rolled upwards, spreading as it thinned, till it was a pall of vapour that sheeted all the lemon-coloured sky. Suddenly a cold wind sprang up, raced down the silent heavens, and, by way of Eastern Europe and the North Sea and the straight Roman road that drives down England, tore along the Utterbridge byways, and into the open window of Clare Hartill's parlour. A touch of its cold lips on her hair, and brow, and breast, and it was out again, driving the dust before it.
Clare shivered. She was very tired of waiting.... It was inexplicable that Alwynne should be late; but Clare with a half laugh, promised Alwynne to forego her scolding if she would but come.... The dusk and the wind and the silence were getting on her nerves.... The tick of the hall clock, for instance, was aggressive, insistent, maddening in its precise monotony.... Oh, unbearable! With a gesture that was hysterical in its abandonment, Clare rose suddenly and flung into the hall, plucked open the clock door, and removed the pendulum. The released wire waggled foolishly into silence, like an idiot, tongue a-loll.
As the quiet hunted Clare into her sitting-room again, a little silver wire flickered down the sky like a scared snake, and for an instant she saw herself reflected in a convex mirror, a Clare bleached and shining and askew, like a St. Michael in a stained-glass window. Dusk and the thunder followed. The storm was beginning.
Clare moved about restlessly. She disliked storms. Her eyes ached, and she was cramped with waiting, and Alwynne had not come. She would, of course.... That woman had detained her, purposely, no doubt, and now there was the storm to delay her.... But Alwynne would come.... Clare smiled securely.