"Very well, Alwynne!" Clare flung up her head, up and back. Her face was drowned in the shadows of the crimson curtain, but her neck caught the last of the light, shone like old marble. The whole soul of her showed for an instant in its defiant outline, in the involuntary pulsation that quivered across its rigidity, in the uncontrollable flutter beneath the chin.
The thin, capable fingers twisted and clenched over the sodden paper.
She moved at last, spoke into space. Passion, anger, and the cool contempt of the school-mistress for a mutinous class, mingled grotesquely in her voice.
"Very well, Alwynne! Just as you please, of course. There is no more to be said." She tossed away the little ball of paper as she spoke.
She wandered aimlessly about the room; turned to her book-shelves after a while, and stood a long time, pulling out volume after volume, opening each at random, reading a page, closing the book again, letting it slide from her hand, never troubling to replace it. She was tired at last and turned to her writing-table.
It was piled high with exercise-books, and she corrected a couple before she swept them also aside.
The rain had not faltered in its swishing downfall. It beat against the panes, and on to the sill, and dripped down into a pool beneath the open window.
"She will have to come back on Monday," said Clare suddenly. "She can't go off like that. There's the school——" She broke off abruptly, as a gust of wind soughed by.
I cannot come. I have gone to Dene. I am going to marry Roger. She could hear Alwynne's voice in it, answering.
"But why?" cried Clare piteously. "Why? What is it? What have I done?"