His voice had softened from the tone of irony. His gentleness broke down her pride. There was something humanly warm and kindly in his sympathy. It seemed to reach farther than her husband’s. A mist gathered in her eyes, and she lowered her head that he might not see the possible tears and the quivering lips....
Would her fate have been thus cruel, if, in the years gone by, in the Sicilian garden, she had preferred this man,—if this man, who loved her, had been bound with her? Would she have known the clutch of terror and felt the wound from the arms of her son? The child who was hers and another’s—might he not have been wholly hers?
She thought bitterly how the male heart had its escape from misery,—such an easy, common one! She wanted her escape. She could not drink and shout; she could fly, leave the terror behind her, and seek a new self in a new world.
“To one that loves you as I do, your misery is his misery, and your despair is his.”
She felt that she should resent his words, but her heart welcomed them.
There was a cry in the room below them, then a crash, and the song came to an inglorious end. Simmons had circled the swaying yellow ball of sparkling wine in too ample an arc. The champagne dashed upon the laughing, upturned face of their hostess; the glass shattered on the floor. A kindly hand saved Simmons from falling.
Dr. Vessinger’s sharp eyes detected the glance of contempt in the wife’s face.
“I think a breath of night air would suit us both better than this hubbub,” he suggested, opening the casement window behind him. “Will you take my arm, Evelyn?”
She hesitated a moment, a sense of duty to be done detaining her. Then, with another look at her husband, at the noisy room of flushed people, repugnance mounted too high; she placed her hand on the doctor’s arm, and stepped down to the terrace beneath the casement. Beyond lay the scented gardens, the breadth of cool heavens, the velvet darkness outside the range of light from the cottage windows, pointed in places by tall poplars.
“Let us get beyond the sound of their noise,” the doctor murmured, drawing her more closely to him. A fresh burst of laughter, doubtless caused by some new antic of her husband, sped her steps away from the band of light about the house. She shivered with distaste of it. Not that! Rather to flee away in the cool, dark night, away forever from the life which she had known and which was a failure,—to find escape from the threatening horror which was hers and his!