The news reached him, I believe, from
there. Then there was Colonel Cathcart for another. He was talking of
it only this afternoon at the Club, saying what a deplorable example
it was for an Englishman to set. He and Mr. Bobby Fraser had quite a
hot argument about it. Mr. Fraser has such advanced ideas, but I must
admit that I rather admire the staunch way in which he defends them.
There, dear child! You must not keep me gossiping any longer. You look
positively haggard. I earnestly hope a good sleep will restore you,
for I cannot possibly take that wan face to the Rajah's ball'."
Lady Bassett departed with the words, shaking her head tolerantly and
still smiling.
But for long after she had gone, Muriel remained with fixed eyes and
tense muscles, watching, watching, dumbly, immovably, despairingly, at
the locked door of her paradise.
So this was the key to his silence--the reason that her message had
gone unanswered. She had stretched out her hands to him too late--too
late.
And ever through the barren desert of her vigil a man's voice, vital
and passionate, rang and echoed in a maddening, perpetual refrain.
"All your life you will remember that I was once yours to take or to
throw away. And--you wanted me, yet--you chose to throw me away."
It was a refrain she had heard often and often before; but it had
never tortured her as it tortured her now,--now when her last hope was
finally quenched--now when at last she fully realised what it was that
had once been hers, and that in her tragic blindness she had wantonly
cast away.
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