At last she took the envelope in her hands. But her hands trembled. And suddenly she saw her own face.
Her face, seen in the triptych mirror of the dressing-table, looked old, haggard. "I am old." she thought. "Nearly thirty. Too old for Ronnie. He ought to have some girl, some quite young girl, for bride."
Then, still trembling, her hands slit the envelope; and hungrily, she began to read.
Reading, joy flooded her face. He wanted her to come to him. He needed her! The mazed loneliness of the last week was a vanished nightmare. She would never be lonely any more. Love had come into her life, into their lives, making them one life. At his postscript, the scarlet of her lips crinkled to a smile.
No longer was the room dark about her. Sunlight flashed back into it, flashed square shafts of gold on the rugs at her feet. A warmth, a rare warmth compound of blood and sunshine, pervaded her body. She saw herself, in the mirror, young again, fit to be his mate.
"I love you." She repeated the words under her breath. "I love you." Rereading the letter, her eyes sparkled. Life was good--good.
But gradually the sparkle in her eyes dimmed; joy went out of her face. "Julia Cavendish," she thought, "Julia Cavendish!" And again, "But life's hard--hard."
Nevertheless life had to be faced.
She faced it, there and then, sitting tense and quiet in the sunlit room. Ronnie was a man. To him, love once confessed must seem a bond, an irrevocable troth. Ought she to take him at his word? Ought she not to strive once again--as they had both so long and so uselessly striven--to forget? Yet could she ever forget? Forgetting, would she not be false to the best in her? To the best in both of them?
Suppose--suppose she ran away with Ronnie? What would be the consequences? A divorce! She could face that, as Mary O'Riordan had faced it. Mary, other friends, would stand by her. If only Ronnie's mother were less the Puritan.