“Every time there is an At Home at this flat,” she said, “I get another white hair.”
She moved toward the door and went out of the room, so that it was left empty.
Outside in the street a piano-organ was playing a rag-time tune with a rattle of notes, and motor-cars were sounding their horns.
In this little drawing-room in Intellectual Mansions, Battersea Park, there was silence, except for those vague sounds from without. There was no sign here of Fate’s presence, summoning a woman to her destiny. No angel stood with a flaming sword to bar the way to a woman with a wild heart. The little ormolu clock ticking on the mantel-shelf did not seem to be counting the moments of a tragic drama. It was a very commonplace little room, and the flamboyant chintz on the sofa and chairs gave it an air of cheerfulness, as though this were one of the happy homes of England.
Presently the bedroom door opened slowly, and Clare Heywood stood there looking into the drawing-room and listening. She was very pale, and was dressed in her outdoor things, as Gerald Bradshaw had asked her to dress, in her hat and cloak, so that she might slip out of the flat which he had called her prison.
She came further into the room, timidly, like a hare frightened by the distant baying of the hounds.
She raised her hands to her bosom, and spoke in a whisper:
“God forgive me!”
Then she crossed the floor, listened for a moment intently at the door, and slipped out. A moment or two later one’s ears, if they had been listening, would have heard the front door shut.
Clare Heywood had escaped.