“We will ask Lydia and Frederic to join us, too,” she said. “It shall be a family party, the five of us.”
“Five?” he muttered.
“Yes,” she said, without a smile.
CHAPTER X
A fortnight passed. Yvonne held the destiny of three persons in her hand. They were like figures on a chess-board, and she moved them with the sureness, the unerring instinct of any skilled disciple of the philosopher's game. They were puppets; she ranged them about her stage in swift-changing pictures, and applauded her own effectiveness. There were no rehearsals. The play was going on all the time, whether tragedy, comedy, or chess.
Brood's uneasiness increased. His moody eyes were seldom lifted to meet the question that he knew lurked in hers. She had given him a tremendous shock. There was seldom a moment in which he was not making strange inquiries of himself.
Was it possible that she had spoken the truth about him? Could such a condition of mind exist without his knowledge? Was this love he professed to feel for her but the flame springing into life from those despised embers of long ago? Was it true that his inner self, his subconscious being, recognised no other claim to his love than the one held so insecurely by its original possessor? Was it true that his soul went back to her the instant slumber came to close up the gap of years?
This strange, new wife of his had uttered amazing words; she had spoken without rancour; she had called his dreams to life; she had told him how he lived while asleep!