CHAPTER XVI—DESTINY
1
SHE heard little more for several hours; merely a muffled stirring about, at long intervals, as if he were walking the floor or trying to move a chair very quietly. The cot on which she now so restlessly lay was his. She couldn't sleep; he might as well have it, but would, of course, refuse.... She listened for a long time to the movements of the animals in the stable. Much later—the gong-clanging watchman had passed on his rounds twice at fewest; it must have been midnight—she heard him working very softly at his door. He was occupied some little time at this. She lay breathless. At length he got it open, and seemed to stand quietly in the corridor. Then, after a long silence, he opened as carefully the outer door, that had on it, she knew, a spring of bent steel, like a bow. After this he was still; standing outside, perhaps, or sitting on the top step.
For a moment she indulged herself in the wish that she might ha\e courage to call to him; to call him by name; to call him by the name, “John,” she had no more than begun, that last day in the tennis court, timidly to utter. Her whole being yearned toward him She asked herself, lying there, why honesty should be impossible to a girl. Why shouldn't she call to him? She needed him so; not the strange stilted man of the day and evening, but the other, deeply tender lover that breathed still, she was almost sure, somewhere within the crust that encased him. And they had been honest, he and she; that had turned out to be the wonderful fact in their swift courtship.
But this was only a vivid moment. She made no sound. The warm tears lay on her cheeks.
After a little—it rose out of a jumble of wild thoughts, and then slowly came clear; she must have been dozing lightly—she heard his voice, very low; then another voice, a man's, that ran easily on in a soft nervelessness, doubtless the voice of Mr. Po. She thought of making a sound, even of lighting the little iron lamp; they must not be left thinking her safely asleep; but she did nothing; and the voices faded into dreams as a fitful sleep came to her. Nature is merciful to the young.
2
During those evening hours, Brachey sat for the most part staring at his wall. Finally, at the very edge of despair—for life, all that night, and the next day and the next night, offered Brachey nothing but a blank, black precipice over which he and Betty were apparently plunging—he gave up hope of falling asleep in his chair (important though he knew sleep to he, in the grisly light of what might yet have to be faced) and went out and sat on the steps; still in the grotesquely inappropriate dinner costume.
A shape detached itself from the shadows of the stable door and moved silently toward him.