“It suits you exactly. What a lovely color you’ve got, Di! A minute ago you looked like a ghost. You were——”
Diane stopped her with a gesture.
“What’s that?”
They listened. A newsboy was shouting an extra edition, and they could hear his shrill pipe above the storm. Fanny’s eyes widened.
“What can it be? No one sells extras out here, in a storm!”
Diane went to the door and listened.
“Some one’s called him. Fanny, go and find out what it is. There’s nothing for me to do now but to work on my gloves.”
The little bridesmaid, glad to hide her telltale face, ran out. Diane stood listening in strange anxiety, unaware that she was frightened. Why should she be? she argued. Why should she worry at all? They were all together and all well—what could be better, more reassuring, than that thought?
Then Arthur’s face came back to her as he had looked when he put the ring on her finger—the feverish light in his eyes, the triumph and the happiness. A feeling, deep and inexplicable, disturbed her; there had been something wanting—some element of strength, fortitude, or poise. At that moment, the supreme moment of the ceremony, she had experienced a new sensation of loss, of shipwreck, as if she had survived the failure of some fine and inarticulate hope and confidence in him.
Standing there now, for the last time in her own room, the new wedding-ring on her finger, her wedding-finery thrown across the bed, she shivered, she was afraid. Then she heard Fanny coming slowly back up-stairs. The girl seemed to halt for an instant on her way to the door. Diane turned and saw her at the threshold. She was holding the newspaper unfolded in her hands, her eyes fixed on the front page, her face expressionless.