Linda advanced to the mirror; and, her hands so tightly clenched that the finger-nails dug into the palms, forced herself to gaze steadily at the wavering reflection. It seemed to her that there had been a malicious magic in Jean's detraction; for immediately, as though the harm had been wrought by the girl's voice, she saw that her clear freshness had gone. Her face had a wax-like quality, the violet shadows under her eyes were brown. Who had once called her a gardenia? Now she was wilting—how many gardenias had she seen droop, turn brown. Her heart beat with a disturbing echo in her ears, and, with a slight gasp that resembled a sob, she sank on one of the uncomfortable painted chairs.
What, above every other sensation, oppressed her was a feeling of terrific loneliness—the familiar isolation magnified until it was past bearing. Yet, there was Arnaud, infallible in his tender comprehension, she ought to go to him at once and find support. But it was impossible; all that he could give her was, to her special necessity, useless. She had never been able to establish herself in his sympathy; the reason for that lay in the fact that she could bring nothing similar in return.
The room—except for the timed clangor of the electric cars, like the measure of lost minutes—was quiet. The photograph of Bartram Hallet in cricketing clothes had faded until it was almost indistinguishable. Soon the faint figure would disappear entirely, as though the picture were amenable to the relentless principle operating in her.
The peace about her finally lessened her acute suffering, stilled her heart. She told herself with a show of vigor that she was a coward, a charge that roused an unexpected activity of denial. She discovered that cowardice was intolerable to her. What had happened, too, was so far out of her hands that a trace of philosophical acceptance, recognition, came to her support. The loveliest woman alive must do the same, meet in a looking-glass—that eternal accompanying sibyl—her disaster. She rose, her lips firmly set, composed and pale, and returned to the neglected flowers in the library.
Vigné entered and put an affectionate arm about her shoulders, repeating—unconscious that Linda had heard the discussion which had given it being—the conviction that her mother was wonderful, specially in the black dinner dress with the girdle of jet. With no facility of expression she gave her daughter's arm a quick light pressure.
From then she watched the slow progress of age with a new realization, but an unabated distaste and, wherever it was possible, a determined artifice. Arnaud had failed swiftly in the past months; and, while she was inspecting the impaired supports of an arbor in the garden, he came to her with an unopened telegram. “I abhor these things,” he declared fretfully; “they are so sudden. Why don't people write decent letters any more! It's like the telephone.... Good manners have been ruined.”
She tore open the envelope, read the brief line within, and, a hand suddenly put out to the arbor, sank on its bench. There had been rain, but a late sun was again pouring over the sparkling grass, and robins were singing with a lyrical clearness. “What is it?” Arnaud demanded anxiously, tremulous in the unsparing sunlight. She replied:
“Dodge died this morning.”
His concern was as much for her as for Pleydon's death. “I'm sorry, Linda,” his hand was on her shoulder. “It is a shock to you. A fine man, a genius—none stronger in our day. When you were young and for so long after.... I was lucky, Linda, to get you; have you all this while. Nothing in Pleydon's life, not even his success, could have made up for your loss.”
She wondered dully if Dodge had missed her, if Arnaud Hallet had ever had her in his possession. The robins filled the immaculate air with song. It was impossible that Dodge, who was so imperious in his certainty that he would never say good-by to her, was dead.