CHAPTER IV
THE VICTORY
He was gone. The clang of the outer door spoke of his departure.
He was gone, and the dread struggle was past.
She came to herself like a dazed mariner flung ashore by the breakers, hardly believing that the peril was over. A great weakness was upon her and she knew that she could not stand against it. Of Rotherby’s very existence at the moment she was unaware. Mechanically, gropingly, she made her way to the settee before the stove and sank down upon it. She was shivering violently.
The warmth came about her, and she stretched out her hands to it, seeking its comfort, thankful for the physical relief of it, yet hardly conscious of her surroundings.
“It is dead—it is dead!” she kept saying to herself over and over. “It is quite—quite dead!”
But for a long time she could not bring herself to realize why she said it or what it was that was dead.
At last by slow and painful degrees it began to dawn upon her that there was a meaning to the words. Something was dead. Something had died by her hand in that very room. What was it?
Now it came to her in all its immensity, crushing her down. She had slain his love. She had killed her own romance. From that night onwards he would never think of her again save with reviling and bitterness of soul. She had taken that which was holy and flung it in the dust. She had desecrated the perfect gift, had made a hideous travesty of that high vision which had been vouchsafed to her. More, she had dragged the man she loved down to the very gates of hell, and had made him know the tortures of the damned.
The warmth was beginning to ease her exhausted body, but her spirit found no comfort. Almost she preferred that numbness of all her faculties. For the misery that was taking its place was more than she could bear.