And she
listened, alternately fascinated and appalled as, step by step, his story
unfolded the links in an apparently inexorable sequence involving this
young man and herself in a predestined string of episodes not yet ended--
if she permitted herself to credit this astounding story.
Sensitively intelligent, there was no escaping the significance of the
only possible deduction. She drew it and blushed furiously. For a moment,
as the truth clamored in her brain, the self-evidence of it stunned her.
But she was young, and the shamed recoil came automatically. Incredulous,
almost exasperated, she raised her head to confront him; the red lips
parted in outraged protest--parted and remained so, wordless, silent--the
soundless, virginal cry dying unuttered on a mouth that had imperceptibly
begun to tremble.
Her head sank slowly; she laid her white hands above the roses heaped in
her lap.
For a long while she remained so. And he did not speak.
First the butler went away. Then Mr. Quinn followed. The maid had not yet
arrived. The house was very still.
And after the silence had worn his self-control to the breaking point he
rose and walked to the dining room and stood looking down into the yard.
The grass out there was long and unkempt; roses bloomed on the fence;
wistaria, in its deeper green of midsummer, ran riot over the trellis
where Clarence had basely dodged his lovely mistress, and, after making a
furry pin wheel of himself, had fled through the airhole into Stygian
depths.
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