She crouched down by the door, forgetful of every consideration of prudence. She was a chidden child, that longed to sue childishly for pardon.
Yes, she was a liar, a criminal!
She had almost tamely accepted his view in the first instance, because it was his view, it was his contempt that had made her feel contemptible. But now her eyes—the eyes of her spirit—were opened, and she even exaggerated the heinousness of her crime, the blackness of her own soul, till she felt herself absolutely shrink from her own carefully cherished and pampered personality. She saw herself morally naked and unpicturesque. All her little ingeniously disposed veils of sophistry and plausibility she tore rudely away. She took a quite savage joy in shattering her own elaborate life-system of pose. The truth, she sadly, tragically perceived, was not in her—it never had been, and again she blamed her mother’s training,—and Truth was everything.
No sound came from the room within. Had she but known it, the artist had flung himself on the bed in his clothes as he was, and had fallen asleep, the heavy complete sleep of a man whose lungs have been breathing in the fresh outside air all day, under circumstances of intense creative excitement. Even now, Art came first.
The door of room number three, a few steps along the passage, opened and closed again. It was the room necessarily occupied by the unknown lodger. Mrs. Elles was too much absorbed either to hear or notice. Her thought, like the thought of a hypnotic subject, was concentrated on the yellow brass handle of the door against which she crouched, which mesmerized her, in its shining immutability. In about half an hour, she made an effort to shake off the lethargy which had taken possession of her, and walking away, like a somnambulist, her hand to her head, and stumbling over her gown, regained her own room.
CHAPTER IX
She cried a great deal—and she slept a little. She would have died sooner than own it, but luckily for her newly developed sense of veracity, there was no one to question her on this point. About eight o’clock in the morning she rose and dressed, resolved to go downstairs to breakfast as usual. She found it practically impossible not to see Rivers again. If he wished to avoid her, he easily could do so.
So at the usual hour, she drifted into the little sitting-room, her face composed to a certain extent, but her eyelids swelled, and her cheeks bleached and seared by a sufficient percentage of the hours of the night devoted to weeping.
The man of her thoughts was sitting at the breakfast table, bending studiously over a Bradshaw. He hardly looked up, but he muttered something civil. Mrs. Elles was woman of the world enough to be able to murmur her conventional “Good morning” in return, for the benefit of Dorothy, who was in attendance, and who watched them both so intently as to justify Mrs. Elles’ peevish remark, “I do wish Dorothy would not stare so.”
“Does she? I have not noticed,” he replied, listlessly. “Would you mind pouring out the tea?”