“But you knew almost immediately after you came here!” exclaimed Lydia harshly. “It is not myself I am thinking of, Mrs Brood, but of Frederic. Why have you done this abominable thing to him? Why?”
“I—I did not realise what it would mean to him,” said the other desperately. “I—I did not count all the cost. But, dearest Lydia, it will come out all right. Everything shall be made right again, I promise you. I have made a horrible, horrible mistake. I can say no more. Now let me lie here with my head upon your breast. I want to feel the beating of your pure, honest heart—the heart I have hurt. I can tell by its throbs whether it will ever soften toward me. Do not say anything now—let us be still.”
It would be difficult to describe the feelings of Lydia Desmond as she sat there with the despised, though to be adored, head pillowed upon her breast, where it now rested in a sort of confident repose, as if there was safety in the very strength of the young girl's disapproval. Yvonne had twisted her lithe body on the chaise longue so that she half faced Lydia. Her free arm, from which the loose sleeve had fallen, leaving it bare to the shoulder, was about the girl's neck.
For a long time Lydia stared straight before her, seeing nothing, positively dumb with wonder, and acknowledging a sense of dismay over her own disposition to submit to this extraordinary situation. She was asking herself why she did not cast the woman away, why she lacked the power to resent by deed as well as by thought.
At last she lowered her eyes, conquered by an impulse she had resisted for many minutes. Her now perplexed gaze rested upon the gleaming white arm, and then moved wonderingly to the smooth cheek and throat. She saw the pulse beating in that slender neck. Fascinated, she watched it for a long, long time.
Suddenly there ran through her heart a strange wave of tenderness. That faint, delicate throb in the throat of this woman represented the rush of life's blood—the warm, sweet flood of a lovely living thing. Yvonne's eyes were closed. The long, dark lashes lay feathery above the alabaster cheek; there were delicate blue lines in the lids. A faint, almost imperceptible depression as of pain appeared between the eyebrows. The black, glossy hair filled Lydia's nostrils with its living perfume.
Life—marvellous, adorable life rested there on her breast. This woman had hurt her—had hurt her wantonly—and yet there came stealing over her, subtly, the conviction that she could never hurt her in return. She could never bring herself to the point of hurting this wondrous living, breathing, throbbing creature who pleaded, not only with her lips and eyes, but with the gentle heart-beats that rose and fell in her throat.
Like velvet was the smooth, glossy skin of her arm and breast. Never had Lydia dreamed that flesh could be so soft and white and so aglow with vitality. There was a sheen to it, a soft sheen that seemed fairly to radiate light itself.
Still in a maze of wonder and something bordering on sheer delight, she fell to studying the perfections that the cheek and lips revealed.
Scarlet, pensively drooping were the lips, and almost opalescent the clear-cut cheek and chin. The delicate nostrils vibrated with the quickened breath that stirred the firm, full breast which rose and fell softly, gently; there were firm, hitherto invisible blue lines in the gleaming skin. Slowly, resistlessly Lydia's arm tightened about the slender, seductive body.