"Home," he whispered to her; and she rested her arm on his shoulder and drew herself erect.
Every servant and employee on the Desboro estate was there to receive them; she offered her slim hand and spoke to every one. Then, on her husband's arm, and her proud little head held high, she entered the House of Desboro for the first time bearing the family name—entered smiling, with death in her heart.
At last the dinner was at an end. Farris served the coffee and set the silver lamp and cigarettes on the library table, and retired.
Luminous red shadows from the fireplace played over wall and ceiling—the same fireplace where Desboro had made his offering—as though flame could purify and ashes end the things that men have done!
In her frail dinner gown of lace, she lay in a great chair before the blaze, gazing at nothing. He, seated on the rug beside her chair, held her limp hand and rested his face against it, staring at the ashes on the hearth.
And this was marriage! Thus he was beginning his wedded life—here in the house of his fathers, here at the same hearthstone where the dead brides of dead forebears had sat as his bride was sitting now.
But had any bride ever before faced that hearth so silent, so motionless, so pale as was this young girl whose fingers rested so limply in his and whose cold palm grew no warmer against his cheek?
What had he done to her? What had he done to himself—that the joy of things had died out in her eyes—that speech had died on her lips—that nothing in her seemed alive, nothing responded, nothing stirred.
Now, all the bitterness that life and its unwisdom had stored up for him through the swift and reckless years, he tasted. For that cup may not pass. Somewhere, sooner or later, the same lips that have so lightly emptied sweeter draughts must drain this one. None may refuse it, none wave it away until the cup be empty.