He opened the door and was gone.
She sat down at the table. She heard him open and shut the hall door, and then his steps echoed down the street, and at last there was silence. She sat at the table with her head bent, her eyes gazing at the oranges and the bananas. The house was perfectly silent, and her very heart seemed to have ceased to beat. Of course she did not realise it; it seemed to her still as though he would come back in a moment and put his arms round her and tell her that it was all a game—just to see if she had really cared. But the silence of the street and the house was terrible. It choked her, and she pulled at her frock to loosen the tightness about her throat. It was cruel of him to have gone away like that—but of course he would come back. Only why was that cold misery at her heart? Why did she feel as if some one had placed a hand on her and drawn all her life away, and left her with no emotion or feeling—only a dull, blank, despair, like a cold fog through which no sun shone?
For she was beginning to realise it slowly. He had gone away, after telling her, brutally, frankly, that he was tired of her—that he had, indeed, never really cared for her. That was it—he had never cared for her—all those things that he had promised in the summer had been false, words without any meaning. All that idyll had been hollow, a sham, and she had made it the centre of her world.
She got up from the table and swayed a little as she stood. She pressed her hands against her forehead as though she would drive into her brain the fact that there would be no one now—no one at all—it was all a lie, a lie, a lie!
The door opened softly and Mrs. Feverel stole in. "Dahlia—what has he done?"
She looked at her as though she could not see her.
"Oh, nothing," she said slowly. "He did nothing. Only it's all over—there is not going to be any more."
And then, as though the full realisation of it had only just been borne in upon her, she sat down at the table again and burst into passionate crying.
Mrs. Feverel watched her. "I knew it was coming, my dear—weeks ago. You know I told you, only you wouldn't listen. Lord! it was plain enough. He'd only been playing the same game as all the rest of them."
Dahlia dried her eyes fiercely. "I'm a fool to make so much of it," she said. "I wasn't good enough—he said—not good enough. His people wouldn't like it and the rest—Oh! I've been a fool, a fool!"