It was growing late. The dinner-gong had sounded, but she would not go down. She rang for Victor, and told him to bring her something on a tray. It did not matter what.
He looked at her with keen little eyes of solicitude, and swiftly obeyed her desire. He then asked her if the dinner were to be kept for Monsieur Pierre, who had not yet returned. She did not know what to say, but lest he should wonder at her ignorance of Piers' doings, she answered in the negative, and Victor withdrew.
Then, again lest comment should be made, she forced herself to eat and drink, though the food nauseated her. A feeling of sick suspense was growing upon her, a strange, foreboding fear that hung leaden about her heart. What was Piers doing all this time? What effect had that message, delivered by Tudor, had upon him? Why had he not returned?
Time passed. The evening waned and became night. A full moon rose red and wonderful out of a bank of inky cloud, lighting the darkness with an oddly tropical effect. The night was tropical, breathless, terribly still. It seemed as if a storm must be upon its way.
She began to undress at last there in the moonlight. The heat was too intense to veil the windows, and she would not light the candles lest bats or moths should be attracted. At another time the eerieness of the shadowy room would have played upon her nerves, but to-night she was not even aware of it. The shadows within were too dark, too sinister.
A great weariness had come upon her. She ached for rest. Her body felt leaden, and her brain like a burnt-out furnace. The very capacity for thought seemed to have left her. Only the horror of the day loomed gigantic whichever way she turned, blotting out all beside. Prayer was an impossibility to her. She felt lost in a wilderness of doubt, forsaken and wandering, and terribly alone.
If she could rest, if she could sleep, she thought that strength might return to her—the strength to grapple with and overthrow the evil that had entered into and tainted her whole life. But till sleep should come to her, she was impotent. She was heavy and numb with fatigue.
She lay down at length with a vague sense of physical relief beneath her crushing weight of trouble. How unutterably weary she was! How tired—how tired of life!
Time passed. The moon rose higher, filling the room with its weird cold light. Avery lay asleep.
Exhaustion had done for her what no effort of will could have accomplished, closing her eyes, drawing a soft veil of oblivion across her misery.