Chad uttered some remark, and she slipped quickly back. He glanced up, and his gaze became transfixed with amazed repugnance. After all, the creatures of the East were black-hearted bats, he thought. Rosalie had been sufficiently disillusioning, but here was Isabel—who had always stood to his mind as a racial justification—looking like the root of all evil.
He put down the vase and followed her, but the stealth in her movements irritated him; and when she whispered tensely for him to look through the door toward which she was drawing him, he was inclined to rebel. But what he saw appeared wholly to chain his attention. He stared in silence for a moment at the two figures beyond, then veered back with a suppressed curse.
Isabel was breathing hard. “You know about those chests!” she exclaimed. “They are a fancy of his. He has been filling them a long time—for a woman—the woman! We did not want any woman to come, did we, and overturn his existence?”
He scowled. “What do you mean?”
“I mean his destiny—his work,” she cried passionately. “You know what I mean. Nobody must get in his way!”
“You don’t think that Barry—and that cobweb of a girl!” Then he muttered fiercely. “Barry shan’t throw himself away too!”
“And she’s wrapped up in another man. She was about to be married to him down South, but they quarreled.”
“Barry’s career has no place in it for any woman—least of all for her.” Chad seemed to be arguing with himself, or the universe. “Why should this moonlit wraith come along and attempt to throw everything into an eclipse? What would he amount to after she got into his soul?” He appealed to Isabel: “Isn’t there any way to get her out of his path?”
Isabel’s features set into a mask. “She’s in the way!” she repeated vehemently. She glanced at Chad sharply to fathom how deep his meaning went.