“Floyd!”
“I want to have Colonel Garland for dinner; I have business with him.”
“No, no; I won’t see him.”
“Very well. It’s not very pleasant for a married man to be obliged to invite his friends to a restaurant, because his wife will not take the trouble to make herself presentable.”
“The dinner will be served whenever you order it, but I will not come down.”
“You can do as you please about that. I’ll ask him for Wednesday.”
“Not so soon?” She was panic-stricken.
“My mother never needed to prepare. Her table was always well supplied.”
With this parting shot he went out.
Julie stood aghast; her adoring slave was turning against her. A man loves only beauty in a woman; when she loses that, she loses everything. She was so young; what was she going to do with the rest of her life? She sat despairing, trying to think herself out of the network of misery which entangled her. She couldn’t, poor thing. The present was a horror to her; the future, a blank. She went back to the past, lived it all over again and again—Martin! the joy of those secret meetings; Hippolyte—the side-door which opened only wide enough to slip into the dark corridor; there, in Martin’s arms——