CHAPTER XXVI
IN the adjoining room, meantime, Rose Summers was passing through hermauvais quart d’heure. She was bewildered, indignant, uncertain. The whole aspect of the situation appeared to have changed—yet dare she say anything to one of the chief actors in the drama?—an actor who sat opposite to her with a stolid demeanor and tragic eyes. She decided that she did not dare. Cecily was, therefore, unavoidably detained for a few minutes, but would not be long. In the meanwhile Rose looked at Mayne, and very ridiculously wanted to cry.
“So you’ve got your own way, as usual,” he began, quizzically, after a few perfunctory questions from Rose about his forthcoming expedition.
Rose winced. It is astonishing how much a smile can hurt. “Wasn’t it the best way?—at least the only way?” she answered, appealingly.
He shrugged his shoulders. “So he doesn’t know she’s here?”
“Doesn’t even know she’s coming,” Rose answered, meekly.
“And he will be overwhelmed with joy?” Mayne inquired, with another smile, difficult to meet.
Rose decided to show fight. “Yes, I think he will,” she replied.
There was a pause, while he looked out of the window. When he spoke, it was with his back to her.
“And Cecily? Does she want this—this reconciliation?”
Mrs. Summers smothered the thought of the possible result of the interview in progress.
“Yes. On the whole—yes. She was touched at what I wrote of his looking so ill.”
“Wasn’t that hitting below the belt?” Mayne asked, with more than a touch of mockery. “And he’s still away?” he added, when she did not reply.
“Yes—but he may be home any day.”
“So you didn’t agree with the step Cecily took?” he asked presently, continuing his merciless questioning,—“leaving him, I mean.”
“On the contrary, I quite agreed. But one need not take unnecessarily long steps.”
“Merely steps of the conventional length,you would say? Just long enough to keep a woman at the side of a man who is unworthy of her.”
She answered his bitterness very gently.
“There’s so much more in it than that—to a woman like Cecily. Shehasloved him—and now he needs her. I understand it.”
He gave a short laugh. “Willheunderstand it? I picture him—complacent.”
“No, Dick,” said Rose, gravely. “He’s been too far into the depths. If he hadn’t, I should never have written to Cecily.”
She hesitated, glanced at him, and made up her mind to go on.
“You see, Dick, it is not as though she had ever——” She paused. She could not bear to look at him.
“Loved me?” He finished the sentence for her slowly, all his affectation of hardness dropping like a mask. “No, you are right. That always settled it. I know I’m a fool,” he went on in a perfectly quiet voice. “Don’t think I don’t know it. I’m like a child crying because a star never came down from the sky to—to be treasured by him.”
Rose put out her hand to him, the room swimming before her eyes.
“Dear old Dick!”
He drew himself up.
“I’m off,” he said, abruptly. “Good-bye, Mrs. Summers.” He took both her hands in one of his.
“You won’t stay to see——” began Rose in irresolute consternation.
“No,” he returned, firmly. “After all, I’ve said good-bye.”
She looked at him, and did not argue.
“God bless you, Dick,” she whispered.
“Give my love to Cecily,” he said, turning at the door.
That was all. Rose heard his footsteps down the hall—heard the hall door close. She was still standing in the middle of the room, where he had left her; she did not know how long she had been standing there, when Cecily came in.
“He’s gone,” cried Rose. “He wouldn’t stay. Shall I call him back?” she asked, desperately. “He told me you had said good-bye.”
Cecily was very pale. She turned a little paler before she spoke.
“No,” she said, slowly. “He is right. Don’t call him. We have said good-bye.”
“Cis?” whispered Rose. “Is it all right?”
“Oh, yes! I suppose it’s all right,” she answered in a dazed voice.
Then she went into her bedroom and shut the door.
Rose did not follow her.