CHAPTER XXXIII
IT was a wet night in November. With a chuckle of horse's hoofs on shining streets, Dan Dyce, with Bell and Ailie, drove from Molyneux's fine new home to the temple of his former dreams—the proud Imperial. They sat in silence in the darkness of the cab, and in silence drifted into the entrance hall of the theatre to mingle with the pompous world incongruously—with loud, vainglorious men, who bore to the eye of Bell some spirit of abandonment and mockery, with women lovely by the gift of God, or with dead-white faces, wax-red lips, and stealthy, sidelong eyes. One there was who, passing before them, released a great fur cloak from her shoulders with a sudden movement, and, as it slowly slipped down her marble back, threatened an utter nakedness that made Bell gasp and clutch at her sister's arm.
“Look!” said Ailie, eagerly. Before them was a portrait of a woman in the dress of Desdemona. The face had some suggestion that at times it might be childlike and serene, but had been caught in a moment of alarm and fire, and the full black eyes held in their orbs some frightful apprehension, the slightly parted lips expressed a soul's mute cry.
“What is it? Who is it?” asked Bell, pausing before the picture with a stound of fear.
“It is Bud,” said Ailie, feeling proud and sorrowful—for why she could not tell. “There is the name—'Winifred Wallace'.”
Bell wrung her hands in the shelter of her mantle and stood bewildered, searching for the well-known lineaments.
“Let us go up,” said Dan, softly, with no heed for the jostling people, forever self-possessed, sorrowful to guess at his sister's mind.
“Yes, yes; let us go up out of this crowd,” said Ailie, but the little woman hung before the portrait fascinated. Round her washed the waves of rustling garments like a surf on the shore at home; scents wafted; English voices, almost foreign in their accent, fell upon her ear all unnoticed since she faced the sudden revelation of what her brother's child, her darling, had become. Seekers of pleasure, killers of wholesome cares, froth of the idle world eddied around her chattering, laughing, glancing curious or contemptuous at her gray, sweet face, her homely form, her simple Sabbath garments; all her heart cried out in supplication for the child that had too soon become a woman and wandered from the sanctuary of home.