Presently she went to the table, and there her eyes fell on the letter Billy had brought. Quietly she took it up, opened it, and read it once, twice, then the third time.
Finally it dropped to her feet, and, with hands groping before her, Joyce staggered to Gaston's deep chair and fell heavily into it.
CHAPTER XVII
Joyce did not faint, nor did she lose consciousness. A dull quiet possessed her, and, had she tried to explain her state of mind, she would have said she was thinking things out.
In reality Destiny, or whatever we choose to call that power which controls things that must be, had the woman completely in its grip. Whatever she was to do would be done without any actual forethought or preparation; she would realize that afterward as we all do when we have passed through a crisis and have done better, perhaps, than our poor, unassisted thought might have accomplished for us.
Joyce was on the wheel, and the wheel was going at a tremendous speed. There was no time for plotting or planning, with all the strength that was in her, the girl was clinging, clinging to some unseen, central truth, while she was being whirled through a still place crowded with more or less distinguishable facts that she dared not close her eyes to.
One cruel thing made her cringe in the deep chair. She was losing her clear, sweet vision of that blessed night when Gaston and she had stood transfigured! If only she could have held to that, all would have been so simple—but with that fading glory gone she would be alone in a barren, cheerless place to act not merely for herself, but for Gaston also.
She was no longer the beautiful woman in the golden dress; nor he the man of the illumined face and pleading arms. No; she was old Jared's wild little daughter; Jude Lauzoon's brutalized and dishonoured wife. Nothing, nothing could do away with those awful facts.