prised
him, too: there was a strange fixity of resentment in her innocuous eye.
Was it possible that she was laboring under some delusion? Or did the
pronoun not refer to her father?

"You mean that Doctor Lombard did not wish you to part with the
picture?"

"No--he prevented me; he will always prevent me."

There was another pause. "You promised him, then, before his death--"

"No; I promised nothing. He died too suddenly to make me." Her voice
sank to a whisper. "I was free--perfectly free--or I thought I was till
I tried."

"Till you tried?"

"To disobey him--to sell the picture. Then I found it was impossible. I
tried again and again; but he was always in the room with me."

She glanced over her shoulder as though she had heard a step; and to
Wyant, too, for a moment, the room seemed full of a third presence.

"And you can't"--he faltered, unconsciously dropping his voice to the
pitch of hers.

She shook her head, gazing at him mystically. "I can't lock him out;
I can never lock him out now. I told you I should never have another
chance."

Wyant felt the chill of her words like a cold breath in his hair.

"Oh"--he groaned; but she cut him off with a grave gesture.

"It is too late," she said; "but you ought to have helped me that day."

End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Early Short Fiction of Edith
Wharton, Part 1 (of 10), by Edith Wharton

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