Shortly after, Hermia drove down to her lawyer’s office and made a will. She left bequests to Helen Simms and Miss Newton, and divided the bulk of her property between Bessie, Miss Starbruck, and Mrs. Dykman.
CHAPTER XXXVIII.
BETWEEN DAY AND NIGHT.
Hermia sat by the window waiting for Quintard. It was the saddest hour of the day—that hour of dusk when the lamplighter trudges on his rounds. How many women have sat in their darkening rooms at that hour with their brows against the glass and watched their memories rise and sing a dirge! Even a child—if it be a woman-child—is oppressed in that shadow-haunted land between day and night, for the sadness of the future is on her. It is the hour when souls in their strain feel that the tension must snap; when tortured hearts send their cries through forbidding brains. The sun has gone, the lamps are unlit, the shadows lord and mock until they are blotted out under falling tears.
Hermia rose suddenly and left the room. She went into the dining-room and drank a glass of sherry. She wore a black gown, and her face was as wan as the white-faced sky; but in a moment the wine brought color to her lips and cheeks. Then she went into the jungle and lit the lamps.
She was standing by one of the date-trees as Quintard entered. As he came up to her he took her hand in both his own, but he did not kiss her; he almost dreaded a renewal of last night’s excitement. Hermia, moreover, was a woman whose moods must be respected; she did not look as if she were ready to be kissed.
“Are you ill?” he asked, with a tenderness in his voice which made her set her teeth. “Your eyes are hollow. I am afraid you did not sleep. I”—the dark color coming under his skin—“did not sleep either.”
“I slept,” said Hermia—“a little; but I have a headache.”
They went to the end of the room and sat down, she on the bank, he opposite, on a seat made to represent a hollowed stump.