illed her with loathing. To
go there day after day with this despair eating at her heart--she simply
could not. She went over her resources. She had more money than she
thought; Jimmy had given her a Christmas present of five hundred pounds.
She had wanted to tear up the cheque, or force him to take it back; but
the realities of the previous five years had prevailed with her, and she
had banked it. She was glad now. She had not to consider money. Her
mind sought to escape in the past. She thought of her first husband,
Ronny Fane; of their mosquito-curtained rooms in that ghastly Madras
heat. Poor Ronny! What a pale, cynical young ghost started up under
that name. She thought of Lynch, his horsey, matter-of-fact solidity.
She had loved them both--for a time. She thought of the veldt, of
Constantia, and the loom of Table Mountain under the stars; and the first
sight of Jimmy, his straight look, the curve of his crisp head, the kind,
fighting-schoolboy frankness of his face. Even now, after all those
months of their companionship, that long-ago evening at grape harvest,
when she sang to him under the scented creepers, was the memory of him
most charged with real feeling. That one evening at any rate he had
longed for her, eleven: years ago, when she was in her prime. She could
have held her own then; Noel would have come in vain. To think that this
girl had still fifteen years before she would be even in her prime.
Fifteen years of witchery; and then another ten before she was on the
shelf. Why! if Noel married Jimmy, he would be an old man doting on her
still, by the time she had reached this fatal age of forty-four: She felt
as if she must scream, and; stuffing her handkerchief into her mouth,
turned out the light. Darkness cooled her, a little. She pulled aside
the curtains, and let in the moon light. Jimmy and that girl were out in
it some where, seeking each other, if not in body, then in thought. And
soon, somehow, somewhere, they would come together--come together because
Fate meant them to! Fate which had given her young cousin a likeness to
herself; placed her, too, in just such a hopeless position as appealed to
Jimmy, and gave him a chance against younger men. She saw it with bitter
surety. Good gamblers cut their losses! Yes, and proud women did not
keep unwilling lovers! If she had even an outside chance, she would
trail her pride, drag it through the mud, through thorns! But she had
not.