The experiment, that morning, narrowly missed success. At the moment when three pairs of eyes were watching with anxious interest, the fumes from a heated retort were wafted into Eileen’s face, and she collapsed in Dr. Schubert’s arms. Judith turned off the flame beneath the mass of glowing coal and hurried to the consultation room where the girl lay, white and deathlike.
“Unfasten her corsets, quick! Her pulse is almost gone.” The physician’s command held an unwonted blend of terror. Eileen Trench was the core of his soul. He could not be impersonal, where she was concerned. At an opportune moment Sydney arrived, to lend a hand.
It was decided that the girl must lie quiet for an hour. And of course Mrs. Ascott would stop for luncheon. Luncheon! Could one eat food, with the world in shambles? She went to the divan, choking with distress. The amber eyes were half closed and great tears welled over the lids.
“It’s beastly to be such a nuisance to those we love....” The blue lips scarcely moved to articulate the poignantly empty words. Then the long lashes drooped in utter weariness, and Eileen slept.
Judith Ascott left the office. She wanted to get away from herself, away from every familiar thing. Unconsciously she turned her back on the cross-street that would have led to the campus and thence to her home. How many miles she walked, she could not guess. She was hazily conscious of smiling meadows and orchards, panting beneath their load of ruddy fruit. Winding hill roads, ankle-deep in dust, and brooks that laughed at obstructing pebbles; pastures where cattle grazed, and acres of coreopsis, resplendent with their wealth of fleeting gold, she viewed with eyes that saw not.
When at last her strength waned and hunger overcame her, she perceived that she was approaching a town. She would go to the station and inquire for a train to Springdale. A little way to her left, graders were at work with shovels that scarred the helpless earth. Great piles of stone and other piles of yellow brick and moulded terra cotta crowned the rising ground. In the midst of all this orderly confusion she perceived a sign-board, insolent with new paint:
DAVID TRENCH
BUILDING CONTRACTOR
She stared in astonishment. Then, by some magic of the mind the solid earth beneath her feet shifted. She was no longer facing south. This was Springdale, and she was approaching her home from the west. The work on Henry Marksley’s mansion had already begun. She shuddered as she thought of David.
From the high point in the parked boulevard, near which the sign-board stood, she could see the distant tower clock, its face gilded by the late afternoon sun. And over there on the newly paved extension of Sherman Avenue the foolish little trolley car was bobbing serenely along. She could catch it on the return trip if she hurried.