The next day a stone Galatea faced the mirror. There was a purple stain upon her mouth—a tiny swelling that would not disappear. It was scarcely perceptible, but it burnt brand-like on her heart; it glared at, and mocked her, and seemed to beckon with horrible witch-like fingers along the grimy gutters that fringe the paved paths to despair.
Loveless surrender! What more unredeemed debasement! Yet she would have vowed her being to lifelong slavery for Gordon Rosser's sake, and held such sacrifice but glorification. One kiss! What was it? Was it gold or was it mud? Mud, mud, mud, which only the magic of love's alchemy could transmute to gold and pearl. Yet the mud had served its purpose. Was it not sufficient to defile the temple that had been consecrated to an unworthy idol, break down its altars, obliterate all memory of misguided worship—child-like, unreasoning faiths?
But her revenge—her curse on the falsity had come home to roost. It not only branded her—it seared the innocent! Poor, poor Yate! What had he done that a suffering girl should have clung to him to avert mental death in an ocean of despond, while he had imagined it but a dancing duet on the waves of love? And she had aided the deception. It had been to gain time, to kill regret, to help in wrenching the weeds she had mistaken for flowers from the garden of her life. Well, she had failed, and the travesty must cease. But before it ceased that which she had striven to do as a duty to herself she would now do as a duty to Yate. She chose paper and a pen with deliberation, and wrote very proportionately and legibly:—
Dear Mr. Rosser,—Pray do not consider yourself bound to return as you suggested, and resume our childish relations. Your long silence has proved you now know your own mind, and I have already found someone worthy of a woman's esteem and affection.—Your sincere friend,
Carol Silver.
She reserved the posting till night, after the coming of Yate, who was due at dinner. In the evening the young man arrived. He had fought his way on foot through a deluge of rain and a thundering blast. The tussle suited his mood, which had rebelled against the suavity of conveyance to his enchanting goal. A handsome colour glowed through the tan of his cheeks, and the sombre green-grey of his eyes shone gallant and golden with the illuminations of love. At first glimpse of him Carol recognised in his personality that almost godlike quality which welds mere dust into heroes. What devotion he was prepared to give her! A crown of sovereignty to lift the chosen one above princes and peoples, pain and penury, and privation. But the diadem was too large, too massive; her poor ignoble head might sink under it. And then princes and peoples would become but a mob, antagonistic or inane, and the pinch of pain, privation, and penury would eternally grip at the strings of her love-famished heart.
She showed him her renouncement of Rosser, and sent it forth to post. His heart bounded, for her composure deceived him and masked the cost of the decisive action.
After dinner, Mrs Silver, complaining of the elements outside and the leaden temperature within, retired to lie down in the adjacent boudoir. They were alone. On a distant pedestal a lamp, petalled like a poppy, threw sleepy rays across the room; at the piano some smaller flowers leant their rose blush to the winking candles. She was seated at the keys in a gown, gauzy white, with two dreamy hands expressing some twilight theme of Schumann's—a reverie of sorrow and sighing. He sat passive, but it was the passivity of the spinning-top. His greedy eyes looked at the wandering fingers and longed to detain them, leant on the mignonette which cast a languid breath from the muslin folds of her bodice—fastened gladly, almost possessively, on the tiny blue speck that marred the outline of her under lip. Poor sweet speck! Oh, that it might there remain for ever as seal royal of the eternity of his truth! At last she lifted her hands and rose. He rose in sympathy and advanced, half afraid; restrained by the indefinable awe with which we all approach joys that are too delicious to be seized.
For a moment she scanned him earnestly but not regretfully, and, as she gazed, she noted the passage of his eyes as they travelled conqueror-wise to the dark flaw on the margin of her mouth. His glance let loose the words that had swelled her heart with pent-up purpose.