And from thinking of Paul, she naturally fell to thinking of Ted too. And it slowly dawned upon her, as she considered it in the light of her present mood, that what Polly had said in her vulgar, uncompromising manner, was the truth. For a whole year she had been living in a false atmosphere of contentment; she had deluded herself into the belief that she was superior to convention and human nature combined, and she had ended in proving herself a complete failure. Paul had seen through her self-righteousness, he had nothing but contempt for her, and he had found it a relief to turn from her to the human and faulty Marion Keeley. In the depths of her self-abasement, she had even ceased to feel angry with Marion.
And Ted had found her out. That was the worst of all. On the impulse of the moment, she fetched some paper and wrote to him at once, sitting there on the uncarpeted stairs, while the people passed up and down unheeded by her. It was a very humble letter, full of pleading confession and self-accusation,—such a letter as she had never sent him before, and written from a standpoint she had never yet been obliged to assume towards him. It was a relief at the moment to be doing something; but she regretted her action the whole of the following day, and hardly knew how to open his reply when she found it awaiting her, on her return home in the evening. It was very short.
"Dear Kitty," it ran:—
Don't mind about me. It's a rotten world, and I'm the rottenest fool in it. I was only hit up the other night because I was so surprised. Of course you're all right, and I ought never to have been born. I knew all the time that you were spoofing me when you pretended to care for me; but I didn't know you cared for any one else, least of all Wilton. He always seemed so played to me, but then I'm not clever. Only, I advise you not to go hanging round his chambers at night; people are so poor, and they might talk. Let me know if you want me or anything. I won't bother you otherwise.
Ted.
He still believed in her, then; only it was more from habit than conviction. But she had destroyed his love for her. She realised these two facts in the same breath, and she rebelled passionately at the loss of the affection that had been hers for so long, though she had valued it so lightly.
"I do want you, now," she scribbled to him in pencil. "Will you come here to-morrow evening? Miss Jennings has promised me the use of her sitting-room. I shall expect you about seven."
It seemed quite in harmony with the general wretchedness of those few days that Phyllis should be seriously ill all the time. The sixty-three working gentlewomen, who had never pretended to care for the brusque shorthand clerk when she was in good health and trampled without a scruple on their tenderest susceptibilities, now went about on tiptoe, and conversed in whispers on all the landings, and got in the way of the doctor when he came downstairs. And they one and all condemned Katharine for her indifference, because she refused to enlarge on the subject at every meal.
"The conversation is never very exhilarating, at the best of times; but when all those women take to gloating over a tragedy, it simply isn't bearable," she was heard to exclaim; and the unlucky remark cost her the last shred of her popularity at Queen's Crescent.
She was waiting at her usual post on the stairs, when they came to tell her that Ted was downstairs. He had come at her bidding; that was consoling, at all events. But when she walked into Miss Jennings' private room and saw his face as he stood on the hearthrug, her heart sank again, and she knew that she was not to find consolation yet. He held out his hand to her silently, and pulled forward a slender, white-wood chair tied up with yellow ribbons, and imperilled a bamboo screen crowded with cheap crockery, and finally sat down himself on the edge of the chintz-covered sofa. Neither of them spoke for a moment or two, and Ted cleared his throat uncomfortably, and stared at the ferrule of his walking-stick.