She sat down again and raised her hands to her eyes as though to remove
her glasses, and then remembered and dropped them.
"I see that you would rather not answer to-day, Miss Sharp--you might
prefer to go now and think about it?"
"Thank you." She turned and walked back into the little salon without a
word more, and when she went I closed my eye exhausted with the great
strain.
But I did not feel altogether hopeless until Burton came in to tell me
lunch was ready and said that Alathea had gone.
"The young lady said as how she would not be back she expected, and she
took her own pens and things in her bag. She was as white as a lily,
give you my word, Sir Nicholas."
I am ashamed to say that I felt a little faint then. Had I overstepped
the mark, and should I never see her again?
A whole party of the fluffies were coming to dinner, and we were to have
a very gay evening. I ordered my one horse Victoria and went for a drive
in the Bois, to calm myself, and the trees with their early autumn
tints seemed to mock at me. I could see too much beauty in them, and it
hurt. Everything hurt! This was certainly the worst afternoon I have had
to bear since I came to on No-Man's Land near Langemarke. But I suppose
at dinner I played the game, for Coralie and the rest congratulated me.
"Getting quite well, Nicholas! And of a chic! Va!"
We played poker afterwards and the stakes were high, and I was the
winner the whole time, until I could see anxiety creep into more than
one eye (pair of eyes! I have got so accustomed to writing of eyes in
the singular that I forget!) We had quantities of champagne and some
exotic musicians Maurice had procured for me, and a nude Hindoo dancer.
Everyone went more or less mad.
They left about four in the morning, all rather drunk, if one must write
it. But the more I had drunk the more hideously sober and filled with
anguish I seemed to become, until when I had called the last cheery
good-night and was at last alone in my bed, I felt as if the end had
come, and that death would be the next and only good thing which could
happen to me.
I have never before had this strange detached sense in such measure as
this night. As of a hungry agonized spirit standing outside its wretched
body, and watching its feeble movements, conscious of their futility,
conscious of being chained to the miserable thing, and only knowing
rebellion and agony.