He suddenly, but gently, attempted to take her in his arms. Though she did not see she felt his touch, and with a cry of horror tore herself away, rushed past him into the adjoining room, and from that into her bedroom beyond. The bang of the closing door fell coldly upon Essex’s ear.
He stood for a moment listening and considering. He had a fancy that she might come back. The house was absolutely silent. Then, no sound breaking its stillness, no creak of an opening door echoing through its bare emptiness, he walked out into the hall, put on his hat and overcoat and let himself out. He was angry and disgusted. In his thoughts he inveighed against Mariposa’s stupidity. The unfortunately downright explanation had aroused her wrath, and he did not know how deep that might be. Only as he recalled her ordering him from the room he realized that it was not the fictitious rage he had seen before and understood.
Mariposa stood on the inside of her room door, holding the knob and trying to suppress her breathing that she might hear clearly. She heard his steps, echoing on the bare floor with curious distinctness. They were slow at first; then there was decision in them; then the hall door banged. She leaned against the panel, her teeth pressed on her underlip, her head bowed on her breast.
“Oh, how could he? how could he?” she whispered.
A tempest of anguish shook her. She crept to the bed and lay there, her face buried in the pillow, motionless and dry-eyed, till dawn.
CHAPTER X
THE PALE HORSE
“Nicanor lay dead in his harness.”
—Maccabees.
The day broke overcast and damp, one of those depressing days of still, soft grayness that usher in the early rains, when the air has a heavy closeness and the skies seem to sag with the weight of moisture that is slow to fall.
There was much to do yet in the rifled cottage. Mariposa rose to it wan and heavy-eyed. The whirl of her own thoughts during the long, sleepless night had not soothed her shame and distress. She found herself working doggedly, with her heart like lead in her breast, and her mouth feeling dry as the scene of the evening before pressed forward to her attention. She tried to keep it in the background, but it would not down. Words, looks, sentences kept welling up to the surface of her mind, coloring her cheeks with a miserable crimson, filling her being with a sickness of despair. The memory of the kisses followed her from room to room, and task to task. She felt them on her lips as she moved about, the lips that had never known the kiss of a lover, and now seemed soiled and smirched forever.