Already Verplank had entered. She could hear him. He was not asking, he was demanding to see her. The form of the order mounted violently.
“Tell your mistress that I am here.”
Even then, with the idea that she might still deny herself, Leilah drew back into the room. Mentally she was framing a phrase when Emmanuel entered.
With that air domestics have when tidying something objectionable, the footman reconstructed Verplank’s command:
“There is a monsieur who inquires whether madame la comtesse receives?”
“Tell him——”
But the injunction, as yet not wholly formed, was never completed. Verplank, brushing the man aside, strode in.
Leilah, retreating before him, motioned at Emmanuel, and the servant, with an affronted air of personal grievance, vacated this room that was charged now with the vibrations of hostilities begun.
Retreating yet farther, her eyes on the foe, Leilah stared at him, and, as she retreated, Verplank, staring, too, advanced. In his stare were threats so voluble that she thought: “He will kill me.” At the thought, there appeared before her Death’s liberating face, the mysteriously consoling visage which it reveals to those alone who have reached the depth of human woe.
Beyond, from the church, came the music of an organ. A requiem was being held. Leilah felt as though it were her own.