“Yer never knows nothin’, do yer? No, yer never does,” kept striking in her head.
“Yer never does.”
She didn’t. Strange, that a suspicion of the particular wrong which Edred might do her had never before occurred to her. Had she found the secret of his coldness and unconcern—in another woman? Was there somebody else?
First, a fierce, instinctive jealousy swept her; then she wished ardently that it might be so. That might be the deathblow of her mad, headlong love for him.
She went to the very end of the journey, then took another omnibus back. At Bond Street she alighted and walked down to the dainty shop where she usually had tea. The woman’s words still haunted her.
“Yer never knows nothin’, do yer?”
One might go on for a lifetime, in a nest of different worlds like London, and never know. That was perfectly true. She turned her sleeve up furtively and drank in the angry purple of the bruises on her wrist. Was another woman responsible for them? It was a new idea and a very enticing one.
[CHAPTER XVI.]
AS days went on she became more than ever persuaded of the fatalism of those suggestive, common words, “Yer never knows nothin’, do yer?” That woman, with the soiled red lining to her kicked-up petticoat—that woman, with the loosely sensuous mouth, big tongue, and rolling bright eyes, had emerged from the gray routine of her particular suburban corner, merely as a warning. Those comically meaningless words became a gospel. She was always saying them, puzzling over them. They were on her pale lips as she looked questioningly into Edred’s face. Once she woke up and found herself saying them in her sleep. It was too stupid. But, if only that persistent quoting of them, in silence, that continual battering of them at the door of her distracted brain, would bring solution! If she could take hold of some slight clew! She found herself constantly longing for proof of Edred’s unfaithfulness. That, she thought, would end her love—her reckless, shameful love for an unworthy object: love that blows, terrible suggestions, the cruelest words and looks could not kill. If she could free herself from that horrid, paralyzing coil of Love!