At the entrance of her visitors, Louise had been unable to see distinctly, so stupefied was she by the thought that the person on whom her thoughts had run, with a kind of madness, for more than forty-eight hours, was actually in the room beside her—it was just as though a nightmare phantom had taken bodily form. And then, too, though she had spent each of these hours in picturing to herself what this girl would be like, the reality was so opposed to her imagining that, at first, she could not reconcile the differences.
Now she forced herself to see every line of the face. Nothing escaped her. She saw how loosened tendrils of hair on neck and forehead became little curls; saw the finely marked brows, and the dark blue veins at the temples; the pink and white colouring of the cheeks; the small nose, modelled as if in wax; the fascinating baby mouth, with its short upper-lip. Like most dark, sallow women, whose own brief freshness is past, the elder girl passionately admired such may-blossom beauty, as something belonging to a different race from herself. And this was not all: as she continued to look into Ephie's face, she ceased to be herself; she became the man whose tastes she knew better than her own; she saw with his eyes, felt with his senses. She pictured Ephie's face, arch and smiling, lifted to his; and she understood and excused his weakness. He had not been able to help what had happened: this was the prettiness that drew him in, the kind he had invariably turned to look back at, in the street—something fair and round, adorably small and young, something to be petted and protected, that clung, and was childishly subordinate. For her dark sallowness, for her wilful mastery, he had only had a passing fancy. She was not his type, and she knew it. But to have known it vaguely, when it did not matter, and to know it at a moment like the present, were two different things.
In a burst of despair she let her arms fall to her sides; but her insatiable eyes gazed on; and Ephie, though she was now free, did not stir, but remained standing, with her face raised, in a silly fascination. And the eyes, having taken in the curves of cheeks and chin, and the soft white throat, passed to the rounded, drooping shoulders, to the plumpness of the girlish figure, embracing the whole body in their devouring gaze. Ephie went hot and cold beneath them; she felt as if her clothes were being stripped from her, and she left standing naked. Louise saw the changing colour, and interpreted it in her own way. His—all his! He was not the mortal—she knew it only too well—to have this flower within his reach, and not clutch at it, instinctively, as a child clutches at sunbeams. It would riot have been in nature for him to do otherwise than take, greedily, without reflection. At the thought of it, a spasm of jealousy caught her by the throat; her hanging hands trembled to hurt this infantile prettiness, to spoil these lips that had been kissed by his.
Maurice was at her side. "Don't hurt her," he said, and did not know how the words came to his lips.
The spell was broken. The unnatural expression died out of her face; she was tired and apathetic.
"Hurt her?" she repeated faintly. "No, don't be afraid. I shall not hurt her. But if I beat her with ropes till all my strength was gone, I couldn't hurt her as she has hurt me."
"Hush! Don't say such things."
"I? I hurt you?" said Ephie, and began to cry afresh. "How could I? I don't even know you."
"No, you don't know me; and yet you have done me the cruellest wrong."
"Oh, no, no," sobbed Ephic. "No, indeed!"