He looked
at her through a mist of pain and saw all her offered beauty
held up like a cup to his lips; but as he stooped to it a
darkness seemed to fall between them, her arms slipped from
his shoulders and she drew away from him abruptly.
"But she WAS with you, then?" she exclaimed; and then,
as he stared at her: "Oh, don't say no! Only go and look at
your eyes!"
He stood speechless, and she pressed on: "Don't deny it--oh,
don't deny it! What will be left for me to imagine if you
do? Don't you see how every single thing cries it out? Owen
sees it--he saw it again just now! When I told him she'd
relented, and would see him, he said: 'Is that Darrow's
doing too?'"
Darrow took the onslaught in silence. He might have spoken,
have summoned up the usual phrases of banter and denial; he
was not even certain that they might not, for the moment,
have served their purpose if he could have uttered them
without being seen. But he was as conscious of what had
happened to his face as if he had obeyed Anna's bidding and
looked at himself in the glass. He knew he could no more
hide from her what was written there than he could efface
from his soul the fiery record of what he had just lived
through. There before him, staring him in the eyes, and
reflecting itself in all his lineaments, was the
overwhelming fact of Sophy Viner's passion and of the act by
which she had attested it.
Pages:
266
267
268
269
270
271
272
273
274
275
276
277
278
279
280
281
282
283
284
285
286
287
288
289
290