She held out her hand, and he clasped it warmly. There was a moment of deep emotion, and she stood watching him as he turned and went slowly out of the room.
XXXVIII
It was late in the afternoon before Diane returned to the apartment. After Overton’s departure she had found it impossible to stay there alone all through the hours that must pass while she waited her husband’s return. The crowd and hurry and noise in the streets had helped her to pass through that inward crisis which had meant so much to her. Silence and solitude would have beaten down upon her like rain and drenched her with misery; but out in the open air, with that upward glimpse of the sun which is all that the narrow streets permit to a New Yorker, she began to rouse herself to face the days and weeks that would lengthen out into years before her, if she lived, and would bring no material uplift, unless—the thought shot through her mind as a ray of sunshine sometimes penetrates a black forest—unless her husband suffered some change of heart.
Something in him, something vague and elusive, but still tantalizing her with a fleeting vista of change, had perplexed her. But his attitude had been the same; it had been the same up to the moment when he had decided that he would not use the loan.
The remembrance of that stung her with apprehension. Was there still to be something to hide, something to fear? It would be intolerable if it went on like that! She tried not to think of it, she tried to think only of Overton’s reassurance about her father, and of the one thing that gave her comfort—the fact that she had returned to her husband. Her duty in that was now so clear to her that she wondered that she had ever faltered, and the very fact that she had done so shamed her. Yet she had been strong enough at last to see the right way and return to it, and that was a reassurance.
It carried her through the day, and brought her back at last without the shiver of dread that had shaken her the first time she found her way to her husband’s quarters—a dread that she had never been able to shake off after his confession. But now she came quietly back, stopping for a moment where Overton had stood, and looking about her.
She was surprised that she felt none of the tumult and storm of the day when he had held her hands in the golden mist, the day when she had almost yielded, almost followed the call of her old love for him. She was aware of a new quietude, an aloofness of spirit, and a great throb of relief shot through her. She knew that her task would be easier, that the way was smoothing before her feet.
She began to long keenly for the moment that she had dreaded—the moment when they would embark for the antarctic, when she could plunge into the dangers and fascinations of that perilous trail. By her very presence she could lift and inspire the soul of Faunce until it rose at last above that awful moment when he had fallen—a coward in the face of death. The thrill of that thought made her turn quickly when she heard his step outside. When he entered, she was standing by a table, where she had just laid her hat and gloves.
But the sight of his face dashed all her newly acquired serenity to the ground. She gave a strange little cry.
“Arthur, what is it?”