They must part; there was no other thing to be done. She was her own mistress, with plenty of money at her command; she could have flown in the face of society, and made Dick forever her own. Such a course did not even occur to her, for she was a creature bound by the laws of convention, almost as rigidly as you or I by the laws of gravity.
Out of very light-heartedness she would do things and say things that would have been dangerous symptoms in a woman of a sterner mold; and men had often pursued her, led on by this laughing spirit that vanished behind a veil, which, being lifted, disclosed an adamant door.
Her great danger lay in her compassionate emotions, and all the womanly nature that lay behind them. Her great danger lay in Richard Leslie, for he was the only being that had ever aroused them to their full strength.
All at once she cast herself upon the bed, and after the fashion of her childhood, buried her face in a pillow, and sobbed, and “grat.”
When she had occupied herself thus for some ten minutes, she rose and looked at herself in the glass, and wondered at her own distorted image, and how she could possibly be such a fool. But she felt better; the pain of parting with Dick was not quite so bad, and she felt kindlier towards George.
If his conduct had taken place in England, I doubt if her anger would have been so soon assuaged. But they were in Japan—and the Japs, you know!—
PART THREE
THE BROKEN LATH