"Take me away, please, to-morrow," she said. "I can't stand it here a moment longer."
Astry turned to the window and deliberately lit his pipe, but his hand shook as he struck the match. Was this an appeal for help? Was she coming back to him to save her?
"We'll go to-morrow," he said, and his voice was almost kind. His old anger against her had died down to ashes, he no longer felt the rage and jealousy of passion; the small figure in the chair and the bent, golden head looked almost childish, and he no longer hardened his heart.
XII
Belhaven came back from town rather late in the afternoon. He had ridden out on the front seat of an open car, talking in a desultory way to the gripman, chiefly because it seemed to afford him a perverse pleasure to disregard the large sign overhead which forbade conversation with the motorman. He was in a mood to enjoy breaking all rules in a puny effort to feel independent. For, if the truth be told, he had felt for months as if Astry had caught him and chained him up, much as the infidel Turks used to chain their Christian captives to the oars when their galleys went into battle.
Not even a long day at the club had relaxed his mood and he was far from feeling as gay and debonair as he had appeared to Eva when she had observed him through the leaves of the rhododendrons. He was deeply vexed with himself, ashamed of the part he had played, disgusted that he had sacrificed so much for a feeling that had proved to be so ephemeral, that he had given up his own freedom and even his self-respect to shield a woman who could toss him aside, at the first alarm, as easily as she would have discarded a soiled glove.
These reflections had become, of late, so habitual that Belhaven found it difficult to control his passionate resentment; like Eva herself, he was engrossed with the spectacle of his own misery, but he longed, more keenly than she did, to visit it on some one else. It added nothing to the joy of the situation either to be well aware of Astry's scorn. It did not require a very delicate perception to understand his attitude, and the bare politeness with which he treated Belhaven made the latter long to strangle him. It amazed him even now, in his moments of blind fury, that he had ever been afraid to encounter Astry's anger, for it seemed to him that he hungered exceedingly for an opportunity to avenge the contemptuous scorn of the other man's manner. To use the metaphor that came uppermost in Belhaven's own mind, he longed "to have it out with him," and the very impossibility of any outbreak that would lead to exposure made it all the more maddening. He could not speak now without betraying Eva, and it seemed to be his lot in life to swallow the polished insults of Eva's husband.
The heat of the August afternoon did not tend to decrease the heat of his mood, and Belhaven, having left the tram at the corner of the avenue, walked slowly along in the dust of the highway, using his stick to knock off the heads of the wayside flowers with a vicious stroke that was at least a small vent for an irritation that had reached the limits of his endurance.
It was anything but a pleasure, therefore, to see Astry himself approaching, seated alone in his smart little trap, driving one of the finest of his thoroughbreds, while Belhaven was fairly in the way to be covered with the dust from his wheels. But, in spite of the feeling which he inspired, Astry was not inclined to dash the gravel of the roadside upon his enemy; instead he drew up as he came within earshot, and leaning over, with his whip-hand resting on the edge of the seat, he called out, in a tone that was unconsciously that of superiority and indifference, a perfectly casual greeting.
"I say, going straight home?"