He went with her to the door, and held her hand in a strong grasp; he could think of nothing worth saying. A cloud of dust blew in their faces; they were pulling down the little row of brick houses on the other side.
Floyd stopped in the hall to brush himself off. The wreckers were working within him, scattering debris. He went up to his wife’s room again, listened; there was no sound. He turned the knob cautiously; the door was locked. There was a sense of relief; he wouldn’t have to spend the morning in that dark room. He jumped into a taxi and drove to his club.
7
Julie gradually recovered; there was a feeling of strength in her limbs, a desire for movement she hadn’t felt since the birth of her child; it was the strength of despair. One day she took out her pretty gowns and hung them one by one on silk hangers in the room next to her bedroom. It had been Floyd’s den; he used to sit there at night during the first year of their marriage, reading. He could see his darling in her lace-trimmed bed. She complained she had no place to hang the Paris creations he bought for her; he suggested putting racks around his den, which they did; those lace, gold and silver gowns seemed to him to hang on bodies which swayed to and fro in the draught. The face was always Julie’s, in her different moods. The perfume stifled him. He had an old-fashioned idea about perfume; his mother never used it. He gave up reading there at night.
She put her hats in boxes, her slippers, stockings, lingerie, wrapped carefully in tissue paper, in an old bureau, a family relic which Floyd refused to sell; it was two hours of fatiguing work, but she wasn’t tired. She opened the door and peered out; there was no one about; she crept down the stairs, went from room to room, covered furniture and mirrors with gray linen, and crept up again. When Ellen came home with the boy, she noticed her dark shining hair. She dismissed her on the spot, and rang up for the Japanese butler to come back.
Floyd was shocked to find the house so bare and cheerless.
“Why have you had the covers put on again?”
“It’s dusty. The furniture will be ruined, and we’re not going to entertain.”
He didn’t answer. When he saw the Japanese, he asked for Ellen.
“Oh! I sent her away.”