"Those dreams of yours for love, for a spirit to delight in your spirit in place of a master delighting in your beauty alone, what are they, those dreams, but the childish stuff of fancies? For other races, perhaps—but for you, take hold of life. There are realities yet in it to bring you joy."
It was all in their eyes, their voices, their intonations, their pressure of her hands.
And she stood there among them all, smiling always that smile demanded of the bride, looking unseeingly into their eyes, listening unhearingly to the sea of voices breaking on her ears, responding in vague monosyllables and a wider smile, while all the time her eyes saw only that face, that smirking, cynical old face, and the tide of terror rose higher and higher in her soul.
Never had she given way to her fear, never since the black night when she found the key was gone.
Then, after frenzied searching in impossible places she had stolen back to her room and buried her face in her pillow to stifle the breaking sobs of rebellion and despair—and of a longing so deep and so terrible that it seemed to rend her with a physical anguish, a pain so fiery that her heart would forever bear the scar.
Never again would she see him now.... Never would she know—never would she know all. She had refused his aid. And he might believe her still aloof, incredulous.... It was finished—forever and ever.
She had told herself that before. But always there had been the key. And now there was no key and no escape and her heart broke itself against the iron of necessity.
She had cried the night through. Morning had brought her exhaustion, not peace but a despairing submission. Why struggle when the prison gate is shut? And if there was never to be freedom for her ... never again the sight of that too-remembered face and the sound of that voice—why, then, as well one fate as another. And it was too late now to recede.
So she had called upon her pride and summoned her spirit to play its part to protect her from whispers, and surmise and half-contemptuous pity. She would surrender to this man because she must, and she would win his respect by her dignity and worth, but her soul she would keep its own, in its unsullied dreams ... and in its memories.... Life would be nothing but a hardship, nobly borne.
But now she had seen the man. Now this wild dislike, this sickening terror.