How I despised her! How hard she looked to-day, when only the night before I had thought her charming and humane.
Doubtless she had slept but little since she left the box in the Pasadena opera house. In the strong morning light she looked old and strangely haggard. Dark circles defined more clearly the faint network of wrinkles beneath her eyes. Her whole countenance was drawn with the tension of her anxious night.
Her aristocratic nose seemed elongated with the avaricious thinness noticeable in grayhounds when the chase is at its height. Even the delicate, shapely hands appeared parched and old.
Never again would I think of the woman as beautiful.
I saw her now for the first time in her true, deplorable character. With but one object to accomplish, her masterful selfishness had taken possession of her soul. Closing tightly its chamber, she refused to hear the entreaties of the outraged voice that plead in vain. For Mrs. Sanderson, retribution was the ghost of the cowardly; repentance, a science to be skillfully ignored.
I could endure my thoughts no longer.
"Good bye," I said, coldly, as I walked mechanically to the door.
As I spoke, the woman raised herself with decision from the floor. With outstretched hands she attempted a fraudulent embrace; but I anticipated the movement in time to escape.
"No, no!" I cried, in childish tremolo; "you must not touch me. I will not pretend that I am sorry that I will never see you again. I will never forget what you have done. Now I will go away, despising you, to the unhappy child whose life you have ruined for selfish amusement and the idle entertainment of your son!"
At last I had spoken, and at last she recoiled before me.