She was conscious, too, that her own emotion dictated her pity for Faunce, that even now she could not quite forget the hold he had always had upon her mind and heart. She was flushed and tremulous when Diane turned suddenly and kissed her.
“Good-by, dear,” she said softly. “I can’t stay here now and face your father. I know what he’d think. Oh, Fanny, I—I wish I had never been born!”
The two girls clung to each other for another moment, neither of them quite able to be coherent. Then Diane ran down-stairs and made her way out into the rain.
XXXI
It seemed to Diane that her emotion, like the storm, had nearly spent itself, and the few fresh rain-drops that fell on her face helped to cool its feverishness, just as a sudden revival of pride and strength helped to quiet the tumult within.
Torn by conflicting emotions, she had stretched out blindly for guidance—or, at least, for some sort of sympathy that would steady her purpose and point a way in the maze. Fanny had furnished it, not so much by what she had said as by what she left unsaid; and Diane felt the sting of mortification at her own weakness. She had gone out like a mendicant asking the alms of sympathy, and she had received not bread, but a stone.
Suddenly, too, she perceived a fact that had long been only a vague idea in the back of her mind. Fanny had been fond of Faunce! She saw it plainly now, with a passionate feeling of rebellion. If love awaited him elsewhere, why had fate delivered him into her hands? It was all confused, all at cross-purposes.
If he had married Fanny, there would, perhaps, have been no question of his confession. Fanny would have helped him where she had failed. That was the cruelty of it—a cruelty that involved him as well as herself. Why had he been so blind? she cried angrily to herself. Why had he passed Fanny by to pursue her? If he had only left her alone—
She stopped short and stood still. Again she saw herself going over the edge of the abyss. She tried to steady herself, to find the guiding light, the lamp to show her the way out.
Then, just at the very moment when she was least able to endure it, least able to battle any longer, she saw Overton himself just ahead of her. He was walking fast. As he turned he caught sight of her, and, swinging around, came rapidly toward her, his face as white as hers was red with embarrassment.