“You will come no more?” she said. She could read him like a book. “I can see that you intend to come no more.”
He did not deny it, and after a moment she opened the door and he passed out with a look of utter weariness. Then she went back to her room and flung herself on the bed, face downward.
The men in the drawing-room were beginning to recover themselves. Lord Robert was humming a tune, Drake pacing to and fro.
“Buying up his church to make a theatre for Glory was the very refinement of cruelty!” said Drake. “Good heavens! what possessed me?”
“Original sin, dear boy!” said Lord Robert, with a curl of the lip.
“Original? A bad plagiarism, you mean!”
“Very well. If I helped you to do it, shall I help you to give it up? Withdraw the prospectus and return the deposits on shares—the dear Archdeacon's among the rest.”
Drake took up his hat and left the house. Lord Robert followed him presently. Then the drawing-room was empty, and the hollow sound of sobbing came down to it from the bedroom above.
Father Storm read prayers in church that night with a hard and absent heart. A terrible impulse of hate had taken hold of him. He hated Drake, he hated Glory, he hated himself most of all, and felt as if seven devils had taken possession of him, and he was a hypocrite, and might fall dead at the altar.