Even in her room, with the door locked and barricaded, she did not feel safe. Panting, she threw herself down and sobbed—dry sobs of fear and anger and despair. What had she done? Where would it end?
“Am I mad?” she whispered. “Have I been walking in madness all these days, believing myself happy with these accursed stones, betraying my husband’s love for me—his honour and upright name?”
She wept, she trembled; she cursed the day she had ever seen diamonds, and cast them from her on the floor. At last, she flung herself on her knees with the broken and bitter cry of a contrite heart.
“O God, help me!”
To her door came a soft knock. She raised her dreary, emotion-racked face and listened, trembling, for a while before she dared respond with an inquiry.
“Who is there?”
It was Valeria Cork’s voice that answered.
“May I come in for a moment?”
Loree’s first impulse was to deny her. All her inclinations were opposed to being seen in such a state of misery and disarray. Yet—had she not called on God for help? And was not here one stronger and abler than herself? Of instinct, she knew that Valeria Cork, for good or evil, had more force of will than she herself possessed. She opened the door.
Mrs Cork, with her ravaged face and burnt-out eyes, came in, carrying the note Loree had written that afternoon. “Will you tell me,” she said, in a cold, far-off voice in which there was no life, “what your reason was for supposing I stood in need of money?”