"No. Are you going to tell them?"
"I shall not tell them, of course."
And thus, by simple mutual consent, it was arranged that each should
respect the other's confidence.
Carlotta staggered to her room. There had been a time, just before dawn,
when she had had one of those swift revelations that sometimes come at the
end of a long night. She had seen herself as she was. The boy was very
low, hardly breathing. Her past stretched behind her, a series of small
revenges and passionate outbursts, swift yieldings, slow remorse. She
dared not look ahead. She would have given every hope she had in the
world, just then, for Sidney's stainless past.
She hated herself with that deadliest loathing that comes of complete
self-revelation.
And she carried to her room the knowledge that the night's struggle had
been in vain--that, although Johnny Rosenfeld would live, she had gained
nothing by what he had suffered. The whole night had shown her the
hopelessness of any stratagem to win Wilson from his new allegiance. She
had surprised him in the hallway, watching Sidney's slender figure as she
made her way up the stairs to her room. Never, in all his past overtures
to her, had she seen that look in his eyes.