Outside everything was very quiet, traffic had not yet begun in their street, though from Piccadilly, a hundred yards away, she could hear the low murmur of the earliest vehicles. But dawn had begun to break, for sufficient light came in through the blinds and thin curtains of the window to enable her to see the details of the room. She could catch the glimmer of silver on her dressing-table, the white shining of the china on her washing-stand; she could see, too, that the door into Hugh’s dressing-room was open, and that the blind could not have been drawn down there, for the gray, colourless light of dawn came strongly in through the oblong of the door-frame. And then, with the first movement she had made, she turned her head and saw him lying by her asleep, having got into bed without having awakened her. His face turned toward her, was turned toward the window also, so that she could see him very distinctly. His head lay on his hand, his tumbled hair fell low over his forehead, and his mouth, drooping a little in sleep, yet crisp and smooth with the firm flesh of youth, drew in and slowly breathed out the even, regular breath. His other arm, with sleeve turned back to the elbow, lay outside the blanket, with the forearm and hand extended a little toward her, as if, even in sleep, his hand sought hers. And there, without colour, in the hueless light of dawn, lay the subject of her thought; coldly, calmly presented to her, like some legal, unimpassioned statement of the case. It was all undeniable: he was so young.
Suddenly she found she could lie still no longer with him sleeping there, and very softly, so as not to disturb him, she slipped out of bed, and once more looked at him, to see that he still slept. Yes; he slept still, but now he smiled, as if that consciousness in man which never wholly sleeps had told him that she, his beloved, was awake and had sent a message to his inert body just to smile at her. And at that thought her heart rose to her throat and beat there. He did love her, she knew that—that and the fact that she loved him seemed the only things in the world worth knowing, and they passed understanding. Yet the gray line lay across the meadow for all that. She had to see where it went—what it was made of.
She put on a wrapper and tiptoed her way across to his dressing-room, for she could not think of that of which she had to think with Hugh in the room, even. There, as she had expected, he had left the blind undrawn and through the open window came in the faint, fresh breeze that sighs round the world as dawn comes with the weariness of another day. Dawn was coming now, the sun rising behind gray clouds that stretched over the whole sky, so that though the street and the houses opposite were quite clear and sharply defined, there was no colour in them—it was all of neutral tint, and all looked old and tired. How different from other dawns that she had seen a year ago at Mannington, when sleepless for happiness she had watched the gold and crimson flecking the east, had heard the earliest fluting of the birds in the bushes, had seen the lawn below iridescent with the dew and renewal of night, and had read into the exultation and youth of nature the exultation and sense of youth that had at last come to her, though late! And now she read into the grayness and listlessness of the coming day its omen for herself. It was all so clear, too; there was no magic mist that flushed pink in the sun; there was no dew on the pavement; it was dry and gray and tired.
And so few hours ago Lohengrin had come in silver mail....
She moved a little in the chair, leaning forward so that she could see her face in the looking-glass that stood on Hugh’s dressing-table, and for a moment her heart rose again. It was by the hard, truthful light of morning, at the hour, too, when vitality burns lowest, when those who are dying lose hold of life, and even the strong are languid and drowsy, that she looked at herself, dispassionately, as at the face of a stranger, critically, as if wishing to see a haggard image look stonily back at her, hostilely even, as if eager to see ruin there. But it was far other that the glass and the cruel pale light showed her; no wrinkles had yet begun their network round her eyes, there was no hanging of slack skin about her mouth, no streak or line which warned her that the glorious sable of her hair would lose its hue. Yet—yes, if she turned sideways to the light, she could see tiny shadows, yet how slight, at the outside corners of her eyes, and between her eyebrows, yet how slight, there ran another shadow going perpendicularly upward, or—were there two of them?
“Remove all wrinkles, render the complexion....” Where had she seen some advertisement like that?
Then she turned away, with a little shrug of contempt at herself. It was not her face—a wrinkle or a line—that mattered. It was her mind, her soul, that she must keep soft and clear and elastic. Where would she find an advertisement that would guarantee her that?
Yes, Peggy was right; each year that passed was bringing her nearer to autumn and age, while those same years were but bringing Hugh to the prime and full vigour of his manhood. It was cruel, hideously cruel, for time was so unreal and insignificant a thing to those who, like her, believed that eternity was their possession; yet this weak, puny time—a mere crawling worm—could wreak such awful damage, could ruin, could alienate man from woman, so that their souls sat alone and starved. God should never have given such dreadful power into the hands of so mortal and fugitive a thing. And He sat so much apart with His eyes looking across all eternity.
It was the hour of loneliness of soul for her, the misery of it was incommunicable. And she had done it herself, it was all her own fault, and it was irrevocable.
She leaned her elbows on the window-sill and looked out; dawn was coming fast, gray dawn, hopeless dawn. The traffic was getting louder in Piccadilly, the earliest ’buses had begun to ply, and the milk carts to rattle. Stray passengers, birds of night perhaps, who had slept out in the Park, moved singly and furtively in the street below, and for the moment she envied anyone who was not herself.