Every word burned into her mind, and she seemed to be mentally repeating it constantly, even as some familiar tune will keep on humming in the brain.
“If you are not there by ten o’clock there will be the report of a pistol heard.”
Marie felt that he would keep his word.
Over and over and over again, with dreary reiteration, those words kept recurring, and then, as the day wore on and she went to her room, she found herself repeating them aloud.
She bathed her burning temples, but found no relief. She threw herself upon a couch, and tried to obtain rest, but those words kept on, and she repeated them as if they were a lesson, till everything seemed dreamlike and strange, and she wondered whether she had really met Glen that morning.
At last she dropped into a feverish, uneasy sleep, the result of her weariness, but the words kept on, and she felt that she was repeating them as she went straight on towards a thick darkness, whose meaning she could not penetrate. All she knew was that she was irresistibly impelled towards that darkness, and it made her shudder as she drew nearer and nearer, till she felt that her next step would be into this strange mystery, when she found herself confronted by Ruth.
“Are you ill, dear?”
“No, not ill; only weary in spirit, dear. There, I am better now. But tell me about yourself. Have you seen Montaigne lately?”
“Yes,” said Ruth with a shiver. “He seems to watch and follow us. He was in Piccadilly this morning as we came back from the Academy.”
“The insolent!” said Marie calmly. “Is it time to dress?”