“Ralph Gowan was with you,” he answered her; “it does not matter who else was there. You had spent those hours in which I wanted you with him. That was enough,—nothing can alter that.” And then all at once he came and stood near her, and looked down at her with such anguish in his eyes that she could have shrieked aloud. “It was a poor trick to play, Dolly,” he said; “so poor a one, that it was scarcely like you. Your coquetries had always a fairer look. The commonest jilt might have done such a thing as that, and almost have done it better. It is an old trick, too, this playing the poor fool against the rich one. The only merit of your play has been that you have kept it up so long.”
He was almost mad, but he might have seen that he was trying her too far, and that she would break down all at once. The long strain of the whole evening; his strange, unnatural mood; her struggle against wretchedness—all were too much for her to bear. She tried to speak, and, failing, fought for strength, sobbed thrice, a terrible, hysterical sob, like a child's, and then turned white and shivered, without uttering a word.
“Yes,” he said, “a long time, Dolly"—but his sentence was never ended, for that instant she went down as if she had been shot, and lay near his feet quivering for a second, and then lying still.
He was not stayed even then. He bent down and lifted her in his arms and carried her to the sofa, pale himself, but not relenting. He seemed to have lived past the time when the pretty, helpless figure, in all its simple finery, would have stirred him to such ecstasy of pain. He was mad enough to have believed even her helplessness a lie, only that the cruel, ivory pallor was so real. He did not even stoop to kiss her when he turned away. But all the treasure of faith and truth and love had died out of his face, the veriest dullard could have seen; his very youth had dropped away from him, and he left the old, innocent dreams behind, with something like self-scorn.
“Good-by,” he said; “we have lost a great deal, Dolly—or I have lost it, I might say. And even you—I believe it pleased even you until better fortune came; so, perhaps, you have lost something, too.”
Then he went to the bell and touched it, and, having done so, strode out into the narrow hall, opened the front door and was gone; and when, a few minutes later, Aimée came running down to answer the strange summons, she found only the silent room, Dolly's white, piteous face upon the sofa-cushion, and the great package of those old, sweet, foolish letters upon the table.
CHAPTER XIII ~ A DEAD LETTER.
IT was all over,—all over at last. Dolly's first words had said this much when she opened her eyes, and found Aimée bending over her.
“Has he gone?” she had asked. “Did he go away and leave me?”