She rushed from the room, with cheeks burning like fire. Come what might, she never could talk to any living soul again about that awful episode.
But Mrs. Clifford sat on, on the sofa where Elma left her, and cried to herself silently, silently, silently. What a mother should do in these hateful circumstances she could hardly even guess. She only knew she could never speak it out, and even if she did, Elma would never have the courage or the heart to listen to her.
That same evening, when Elma went up to bed, a strange longing came across her to sit up late, and think over to herself again all the painful details of the morning’s interview. She seated herself by her bedside in her evening dress, and began to think it all out again, exactly as it happened. As she did so, the picture of Sardanapalus, on his bed of fern, came up clear in her mind, just as he lay coiled round in Cyril Waring’s landscape. Beautiful Sardanapalus, so sleek and smooth and glossy, if only she had him here now—she paused and hesitated. In a moment, the wild impulse rushed upon her once more. It clutched her by the throat; it held her fast as in a vice. She must get up and dance; she must obey the mandate; she must whirl till she fell in that mystical ecstasy.
She rose, and seemed for a moment as though she must yield to the temptation. The boa—the boa was in the lower drawer. Reluctantly, remorsefully, she opened the drawer and took it out in her hands. Fluff and feathers, fluff and feathers—nothing more than that! But oh, how soft, how smooth, how yielding, how serpentine! With a violent effort she steadied herself, and looked round for her scissors. They lay on the dressing-table. She took them up with a fixed and determined air. “If thy right hand offend thee, cut it off,” she thought to herself. Then she began ruthlessly hacking the boa into short little lengths of a few inches each, which she gathered up in her hands as soon as she had finished, and replaced with care in the drawer where she had originally found them.
After that her mind felt somewhat more at ease and a trifle less turbulent. She loved Cyril Waring—oh yes, she loved him with all her heart; it was hard to give him up; hard not to yield to that pressing impulse in such a moment of doubt and despondency. The boa had said to her, as it were, “Come, dance, go mad, and forget your trouble!” But she had resisted the temptation. And now—
Why, now, she would undress, and creep into bed, like any other good English girl under similar circumstances, and cry herself asleep with thoughts of Cyril.
And so she did in truth. She let her emotion take its natural outlet. She lay awake for an hour or two, till her eyes were red and sore and swollen. Then at last she dropped off, for very weariness, and slept soundly an unbroken sleep till morning.
At eight o’clock, Mrs. Clifford knocked her tentative little knock at the door. “Come in, mother,” Elma cried, starting up in her surprise; and her mother, much wondering, turned the handle and entered.
When she reached the bed, she gave a little cry of amazement. “Why, Elma,” she exclaimed, staring her hard and long in the face; “my darling, what’s this? Your eyes are red! How strange! You’ve been crying!”
“Yes, mother,” Elma answered, turning her face to the wall, but a thousand times less ashamed than she had been the day before when her mother spoke to her. “I couldn’t help it, dearest.” She took that soft white hand in hers and pressed it hard in silence. “It’s no wonder, you know,” she said at last, after a long deep pause. “He’s going away from Chetwood to-day—and it was so very, very hard to say good-bye to him for ever.”