"Why is it such a heart-breaking tangle?" she murmured, locking her hands together till the points of her sapphire ring cut into the flesh. But she only pressed the harder. She understood now how it was that monks and fanatics strove to ease the soul through torments of the flesh. A pang of physical pain would have been a positive relief just then. But there was none for her to bear. She was young, vigorous, radiantly alive. She had not so much as a headache after her anxious vigil. The high gods had willed that she should feel and suffer to the full. There is no other pathway to the ultimate heights.
The soft closing of the study door sounded loud in the stillness; and she went reluctantly into her own room.
CHAPTER XXIX.
THE UTTERMOST FARTHING.
"We then that are strong ..."
—St Paul.
To say that Owen Kresney was annoyed would be to do him an injustice. He was furious at the unlooked-for interruption, which bade fair to cancel all that he had been at such pains to achieve. Pure spite so mastered him, that even the news of Desmond's critical condition—which stirred the whole station the morning after the funeral—awakened no spark of pity in that region of concentrated egotism which must needs be called his heart.
The "counter-check quarrelsome" would have been welcome enough. But this impersonal method of knocking the ground from under his feet goaded him to exasperation. He had not even the satisfaction of knowing that he had wrought jealousy or friction between husband and wife. Desmond had practically ignored his existence. There lay the sting that roused all the devil in Kresney; and the devil is a light sleeper in some men's souls. But the Oriental strain in the man made him an adept at a waiting game; and finding himself cavalierly thrust aside, he could do no otherwise than remain in the background for the present, alert, vigilant, cursing his luck.