PAULA IS SWEPT DEEP INTO A DESOLATE COUNTRY BY THE HIGH TIDE, BUT NOTES A QUICK CHANGE IN SELMA CROSS
Paula wrote a short letter to Quentin Charter in the afternoon, and did not begin to regret it until too late. It was not that she had said anything unwise or discordant—but that she had written at all.... Her heart felt dead. She had trusted her all to one—and her all was lost. A little white animal that had always been warm and petted, suddenly turned naked to face the reality of winter,—this was the first sense, and the paramount trouble was that she could not die quickly enough. The full realization was slow to come. Indeed, it was not until the night and the next day that she learned the awful reaches of suffering of which a desolated human mind is capable. It was like one of those historic tides which rise easily to the highest landmarks of the shore-dweller, and not till then begin to show their real fury, devastating vast fields heretofore virgin to the sea. Along many coasts and in many lives there is one, called The High Tide.... Paula felt that she could have coped with her sorrow, had this been a personal blow, but her faith in the race of men, the inspiration of her work, her dream of service—all were uprooted.
She did not pretend to deny that she had loved Quentin Charter—her first and loftiest dream of a mate, the heart's cry of all her womanhood. True, as man and woman, they had made no covenant, but to her (and had he not expressed the same in a score of ways?), there had been enacted a more wonderful adjustment, than any words could bring about. This was the havoc. She had lost more than a mere human lover. She dared now to say it, because, in losing, she perceived how great it had become—the passion was gone from her soul. Her place in the world was desolate; all her labors pointless. As a woman, she had needed his arms, less than an anchorage of faith in his nobility. And how her faith had rushed forth to that upper window across the States!
Words—the very word was poison to her. Writing—an emptiness, a treachery. Veritably, he had torn the pith out of all her loved books.... Bellingham had shown her what words meant—words that drew light about themselves, attracting a brilliance that blinded her; words that wrought devilishness in the cover of their white light—but Bellingham had not assailed her faith. This was the work of a man who had lifted her above the world, not one who called from beneath. Bellingham could not have crippled her faith like this—and left it to die.... Almost momentarily, came the thought of his letters—thoughts from these letters. They left her in a dark—that was madness....
And if they were false, what was the meaning of her exaltations? Night and morning she had looked into the West, sending him all the graces of her mind, all the secrets of her heart. He had told her of the strange power that had come to him, of the new happiness—how, as never before, he had felt radiations of splendid strength. She had not hurried him to her, but had read with ecstasy, believing that a tithe of his new power was her gift.... Words, desolate, damnable words.... "And I had thought to heal and lift New York," she exclaimed mockingly, looking down into the gray streets after the age-long night. "New York holds fast to her realities—the things she has found sure. It is well to be normal and like New York!"
The day after the door had shut upon Selma Cross, Paula was a betrayed spirit wandering alone in polar darkness. She had not slept, nor could she touch food. Twice the actress had rapped; repeatedly the telephone called—these hardly roused her. Letters were thrust under her door and lay untouched in the hall. She was lying upon the lounge in the little room of books, as the darkness swiftly gathered that second day. All the meanings of her childhood, all the promises for fulfillment with the years, were lost. The only passion she knew was for the quick end of life—to be free from the world, and its Bellinghams.
"God, tell me," she murmured, and her voice sounded dry and strange in the dark, "what is this thing, Soul, which cries out for its Ideal—builds its mate from all things pure, from dreams that are cleansed in the sky; dreams that have not known the touch of any earthly thing—what is this Soul, that, now bereft, cries with Rachel, 'Death, let me in!...' Oh, Death, put me to sleep—put me to sleep!"
Voices reached her from the hall:
"You can knock or ring, sir, if you like," the elevator-man was saying, "but I tell you Miss Linster is not there. She has not answered the 'phone, and there is one of the letters, sticking out from under the door, that I put there this morning, or yesterday afternoon."