That he should ride coolly by and give no sign, while her heart ached as if a knife were in it, while she drained to the dregs the cup of lonely love! That was bitter. But bitterer still the knowledge that within herself lay the reason of their separation, as well as the power to end it. She could bring him back this very hour if she wished, was her thought. Yet, could she? Were not those other bonds that held her soul in slavery stronger than herself—stronger (as he had suggested in his letter) than her love for Denis Harlenden?
Miserably, her face lifeless and pale as the face of one who has lain among the ashes of renouncement and repentance, she rose from the bed where she had flung herself weeping, and creeping to an old-fashioned oak bureau of heavy make, sat down before it and began to unlock its many drawers and take therefrom a number of little jewel-cases. One by one she opened these and spread before her the radiant, sparkling things they contained with their myriad points of light and dancing colour. She ran the things through her fingers and bathed her hands in them like water. Then she curved her palms into a cup and held them filled to the brim with such a sparkling draught as only a god could drink—a draught with fire and ice in it, blood and crystal water, purity and evil. The roses of life and the blue flowers of death were all intermingled and reflected in that magic draught of frozen fire and liquid crystal. As the girl gazed into it, colour came back to her pale face, and her eyes caught and returned the flashing beams of light. It almost seemed as if she and the stones, able to communicate, were exchanging the signals of some secret code.
One jewel was more beautiful than all the rest, the lovely, flexible chain of stones she had been holding to her breast that night when Harlenden surprised her coming from the garden into the veranda—the thing he had shaken from her hand into her lap as if it had been a toad. She remembered Harlenden, now, as she gazed into the iridescent shapes of light, seeming to see in their brilliant, shallow depths worlds of romance that every-day life knew not of. At last she caught the thing up and kissed it burningly, then pressed it against her heart as if it possessed some quality of spikenard to ease the pain she still felt aching there. The sound of the dinner-gong shook her from her strange dreams, and hastily, yet with a sort of lingering regret, she began to gather up the jewels and lay them once more into their downy nests of white velvet. Her fingers caressed and her eyes embraced every single stone as she laid it away.
"I must get some more," she murmured feverishly to herself; "I must get some more—soon!"
She had forgotten Denis Harlenden now. Her lips took on a hungry, arid line, and her eyes were suddenly hard and more brilliant than the stones she handled. The lust of diamonds, which is one of the greatest and most terrible of all the lusts, had got her in its scorpion-claws and was squeezing love from her heart and beauty from her soul.
"Rosanne, your sister is worse," her mother said, at dinner. They had reached dessert, but these were the first words that had passed between them. Rosanne's shoulders moved with the suggestion of a shrug.
"I think she gives way," she remarked coldly. "She could shake off that illness with the exercise of a little self-control."
"It is easy to talk like that when you are not the sufferer, dear. You forget that her whole heart is wrapped up in Dick. I believe that if he dies, she will—." The mother's words ended in something very like a sob. She looked utterly worn out and wretched. Her eyes wistfully searched Rosanne's, but the latter's mood appeared to be one of complete sang-froid.
"You always look on the worst side of things, mother," she said calmly. "If Dick dies, and I daresay he will—cancer of the throat is nearly always fatal, I believe—Rosalie will get over it in time and marry some other man."
"Rosanne, I never thought you could be so heartless!"