“His shoulder is very painful. I’ve just telephoned to Dr. Pelham, asking if I shall give him another opiate——I couldn’t take the responsibility of letting you see him,” she added hastily.
“Oh, of course not. What time do you expect Dr. Pelham?”
“He’ll come at once.”
Gita nodded and went into her bedroom and dressed slowly.
She was aware that she had slept off her cold fury, and felt something like sympathy for Eustace, disabled, and suffering, no doubt, as much in mind as in body. . . . Probably a man did have a grain of excuse when he loved a woman and despaired of winning her with charm and good manners. Lost his head, poor wretch . . . brain hopelessly confused by fumes of passion and all that . . . tumbled out of hard-won psychological differentiations straight into generalities. Passion must awaken passion; all that old tosh. . . . He must feel like a fool—worse than failure, for Eustace Bylant. . . . She did feel sorry for him, for she had admired him prodigiously, and loved him in a way.
She was devoutly thankful she hadn’t killed him. He’d live to write more books—perhaps better ones. Might get some drama into them after that seismic upheaval inside him that must have astonished him as much as herself. . . . Might even marry again, although he’d done well enough as a bachelor. She doubted if he cared deeply about domestic routine. He’d had his grand passion—like Lee Clavering over that strange Countess Zattiany she’d heard so much about. Doubtful if Clavering would have written a really great play if Zattiany hadn’t shocked him out of his pleasant pastures into a tropical jungle. He might be dour to look at and none too expansive socially, but it was evident his imagination worked at white heat, and no doubt he was grateful whether he admitted it or not. Eustace would live to be grateful to her.
At all events one thing hadn’t happened. She remembered that sometime last night she had experienced a fleeting fear that that horrible episode would destroy all she had learned—recall all she had banished—during this past auriferous year, and she would be as hard and hating and handicapped as when she had just escaped from her old life . . . destroy all power of appreciation and enjoyment, all her new adaptability, all interest in the future.
But all experience counted, apparently. She would always think of last night with a shudder, but at least it had not revived her old abhorrence of men because one man had mauled her—as other men had tried to, sometimes had done, in the past. A second neurosis might be worse than the first. No doubt her sense of justice, of proportion, developing unconsciously, had balanced her unalterably.
She put on a dark blue skirt and sweater, automatically rejecting the bright colors she preferred, and even powdered her face to subdue her own color. Noblesse oblige! And if she didn’t feel hard she certainly felt severely practical as she went down to meet Dr. Pelham. Romance had toppled over the horizon.
He looked at her keenly as he entered and asked professionally: “I hope you got a little sleep?”