But somehow he could not stay in the room with that pathetic, appealing little figure. He racked his brains for an excuse to leave her for a moment or two; and suddenly the idea he sought came to him in a flash.
He had omitted to wire to Paris for rooms in the quiet little hotel he had selected for their stay; and although it was not a matter of vital necessity to do so, it would perhaps be just as well to make sure of them, so that there need be no troublesome delay on arrival. There was a post-office a hundred yards away, and he would only be gone for a few moments. He did not venture to approach Toni, but speaking from the door explained that he had forgotten to engage rooms in Paris, and if she would excuse him for a minute or two he would rectify the omission. She agreed gently, giving him a tired little smile; and he wasted no time in departing on his errand.
When the door had closed behind him, Toni came to herself with a long, slow shiver. Somehow until this moment she had not really understood all that her flight implied. She had been so intent upon Owen's welfare, that save for a few moments in the garden at Greenriver her own had been forgotten; and although she had accepted Leonard Dowson's proposal with an almost startling readiness, she had done so in the manner of one who, drowning, clutches at a straw.
She had known, of course, that there would be a price to pay; but she had not realized until this second how great that price would be. Somehow the very nature of Leonard's errand had brought the whole position home to her with almost overwhelming force; and suddenly Toni knew that she could not go on with the adventure she had undertaken so rashly.
She could not—could not—go to Paris with this man, who for all his devotion was a stranger to her. She could leave Owen, though it seemed like tearing her heart out of her breast to go. But she could not go away with another man.
Gone all at once was the glamour of her sacrifice. Although she knew that by carrying out her scheme to the bitter end she might set Owen free, it seemed to her at this moment that such freedom, so basely won, could never bring her husband the happiness she craved for him.
For the first time, too, the thought of self would not be banished. She saw the whole foolish, irrational, Quixotic scheme in its true light; and flesh and blood shrank from a surrender which had no faintest touch of love—or even passion—to dignify sordidness.
No. She could leave her husband—and in a sudden blinding flash of insight she knew she could not—now—go back to Greenriver; but she could not proceed farther on this shameful way.
To go to the hotel in Paris with this other man, to travel with him in the enforced intimacy of their dual solitude, to pass, for all she knew, as his wife when in reality she was the wife of the one man for whom the great mystic trinity of body, soul and spirit passionately craved—oh, no. She could not go on—and with the certainty came the need for haste.
Suddenly the only thing which seemed to matter in all the world was that she must be gone before Leonard Dowson returned. If once he came back and heard her decision, there would be scenes, reproaches, persuasions, a hundred emotions let loose; and Toni was guiltily conscious, through all her new-born resolution, that she was treating this man who loved her unfairly.