“Ah, my comrade,” cried Roderick, turning suddenly round, “what message has science to deliver comparable to this?”
“None that I'm aware of, thank Heaven!” replied Sylvester.
Roderick broke into his gay laughter and crossed the room.
“We must think of him kindly, as good Catholics do of those that sit in darkness and ignorance, eh, Ella?”
With a lover's gesture he passed his arm lightly around Ella's waist, and drew her with ever so delicate a pressure a little nearer to him, and looked tenderly into her eyes.
Sylvester started to his feet. A feeling unexpected, undreamed of, hateful, passed through him,—a wave of disgust, of sudden, fierce hatred of Roderick standing there as the undisputed possessor of Ella Defries. Had the man kissed her, he would have struck him. A phrase formulated in Heaven knows what cell of his brain leaped with ghastly suddenness into his mind. How dare that loathsome brute touch her? The revulsion was physical, almost unendurable. It lasted but a moment or two. Then Ella moved away and Lady Milmo came up with a light remark, and the world was as it was before,—a great grim vanity which he regarded with apathetic indifference.
He took his leave early, pleading professional duties. Ella gave him a defiant hand and her lips had a contemptuous curl as she bade him good-night. Roderick, taking upon himself the part of man of the house, accompanied him downstairs and pressed whisky and soda upon him amid fervid expressions of regard. The discreet man-servant helped him on with his overcoat, and the welcome cold air of the street was upon him. There was a touch, of early frost and the stars shone clear. The memory of his unaccountable seizure half an hour ago brought back the memory of a night in Ayresford when he had read, as his heart prompted, the message of the stars. He hailed a passing cab, entered it with the air of a man who has the business of life to consider and not the dreams of a dead past. But in spite of himself the dreams came back, ugly and chilling, and he spent the drive home in brooding thought. What did Roderick's caresses matter to him? Did he not despise Ella utterly? For aught he cared they might marry into eternal misery to-morrow. It was only for his father's sake that he wished to part them. Roderick was a plausible knave, Ella a woman, feline, treacherous, delicate of face and gross of soul. They were well paired. He laughed cynically as he settled down to his evening's work in his laboratory. Here at least were things which he could understand. The growth of a bacillus in a bed of jelly was comprehensible. He could see it, test it. But who could see the growth of a lie in the heart of a human being? And the man himself was unconscious that a dead love had awakened that evening from its sleep and had passionately, for one brief instant, raised the stone that covered the mouth of its tomb.