Businessmen -- Virginia -- Fiction; Upper class -- Virginia -- Fiction; Women dancers -- France -- Fiction
He walked heavily down the driveway to the old gates. An impulse had
brought him--an impulse that he had been too broken to resist. Now, in
its reaction, he despised his own weakness. What right had he to worry
Virginia? But his mind was still in conflict; he could no longer think
concisely or even clearly. Like a man in a dream he walked out of the
gates and turned into the road toward town.
The look in Virginia’s eyes, the look that had roused him, came back
to him only dimly. It was obscured by the scene that haunted him--the
scene in the court-room. He could see the crowd of staring faces again,
the judge on the bench, judicial and disinterested, the flushed,
scowling countenance of the prosecuting attorney, the jury--and Daniel!
How coolly his brother had stood in that heated, tense atmosphere! How
his eyes had kindled and his voice pleaded for the boy’s life! For
jail would have been a living death to one so young.
Leigh rose before him, too. He could see the boy’s beautiful face and
his girlish eyes, and the change in him, the terrible change. The look
of a man--a man who has killed--was in those young eyes!
William drew his breath hard. Her work, he thought bitterly! And yet
how she haunted him! He could see more plainly than anything else her
small, white face with its pointed chin and its fawn-like eyes. He
could hear her voice, sweet and hurrying and light, with the spell of
sex in it--how it haunted him, too! But he was done with her. He set
his teeth hard and clenched his hand, walking on.
He walked blindly. A taxi passed, but he was unaware of it. He never
looked up, he looked down into the dust of the road, for his heart was
heavy and bitter. He was done with her!
Fanchon, who had hidden in the corner of the taxi that he might not
see her, leaned forward now and looked out. She was on her way to the
refuge she had found in the country--a poor, desolate place, but all
that she could pay for--more than she could pay for, if the truth be
told. She felt ill and weak, and she must go somewhere--anywhere, away
from the Carters. There was fever in her blood and her lips were dry,
but her brilliant, restless eyes looked out after the figure in the
road.
She had seen him come out of the Denbigh gates!
She had thought of this, she had pictured it. If he got a divorce, he
would marry Virginia--she never doubted that Virginia would take him.
And now, now when it seemed to her that it was already on its way to
accomplishment, she sank back into her corner aghast.
She lifted a shaking hand and pushed back the soft hair from her
forehead. It was a helpless, thoughtless gesture, but she had pulled
off her gloves, and the light caught the rings on her fingers. Suddenly
she saw her wedding-ring--William’s ring. She held out her small hand
and stared at it, choking back the sob in her throat. She remembered
the look in his eyes when he had put that ring on her finger. How he
had loved her then!
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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