"A needless cruelty, father," cried she. "Ah, how I hid this from her; how I tried to hide it! This is a needless cruelty! I thought that a man as wise as thou would do nothing so uncalled for. But thou hast committed a vileness!"
Darvid made an abrupt movement, but restrained himself, and with his face toward the window he heard the retreating footsteps of the two women. There was a second of time during which he turned his head, and his lips moved as if some word, a name was to escape from him. At that moment the two women, holding to each other, moved slowly through the next drawing-room, advanced in the increasing darkness, and vanished. He uttered no word. What was his feeling when she shrieked and struck her head against the edge of the table? Was it pity? Perhaps. Was it a quiver of sorrow for that past which had left him forever, and for that daughter who went out with the word "vileness" hanging on her lips? Perhaps. But he said nothing; he uttered no name. He remained alone. It was silent around him and empty. Emptiness occupied that part of space beyond the window, for the rosy cloud which had passed there a while before had vanished. The figure of Darvid standing at the window became darker in that gloom, which, growing denser, dimmed and then concealed the white, the blue, and the gilding of the great drawing-room. By degrees the lines of his face became invisible; his trembling hands and the quiver of the skin on his cheeks were no longer to be distinguished, and Darvid appeared on the gray background of the window as a narrow and perfectly black line. He did not go away, for he was riveted there, fixed in thought, filled with amazement. In this way, in this manner then, all things on earth are ended. Those invisible giants, Death, Insanity, Anguish, Rage, go about the world trampling, crushing, rending, and no man has power to arrest them! He had never thought about those giants. How could he? Was he a philosopher? He had not had time to think. Now he was thinking, and at the bottom of his stony meditation he beholds a pale, dreadful visage. Something which recalls a Medusa-head, which he had seen some time in a picture. It has struggled out of raging waves, and is resting on them face upward; its hair is torn; its gaze has endless depth; and on its blue lips is a jeering smile. What is it jeering at? Perhaps at the grandeur of the man who appears as a narrow line on the gray background of that window, black, and alone as he is, in the gathering gloom and the silence?
Now something soft and timid touches his feet, and he sees a little dark point moving. He stoops and calls:
"Puffie!"
At the floor was heard thin barking. Puffie had always barked that way to call the attention of his mistress.
Darvid bent low with his hand on the silky coat, and repeated:
"Puffie!"
Then he straightened himself, and, leaving the window, called several times in succession:
"Puffie! Puffie!"
The black line moved on, in the gray darkness, through two drawing-rooms, and behind it, on the floor, rolled the dark small ball-like object, till a space of bright light gleamed before them. This was the widely open door of his clearly lighted study.