Page:Gilbert Parker--The Lane that had No Turning.djvu/28

12 ceived him for a moment. He thought now that she must have known of his deformity before she came—the world was so full of tale-bearers! and had long since maybe reconciled herself to the painful fact. She had shown no surprise, no shrinking. There had been only the one lightning instant in which he had felt a kind of suspension of her breath and being, but when he had looked her in the face, she was composed and smiling. After all his frightened anticipation, the great moment had come and gone without tragedy. With satisfaction he looked in the mirror in the hall as they passed inside the house. He saw no reason to quarrel with his face. Was it possible that the deformity did not matter, after all?

He felt Madelinette's hand on his arm. He turned and clasped her to his breast.

He did not notice that she kept her hands under her chin as he drew her to him, that she did not, as had been her wont, put them on his shoulders. He did not feel her shrink, and no one, seeing, could have said that she shrank from him in ever so little.

"How beautiful you are!" he said, as he looked into her face.

"How glad I am to be here again, and how tired I am, Louis!" she said. "I've driven thirty miles since daylight." She disengaged herself. "I am going to sleep now," she added. "I am going to turn the key in my door till evening. Please tell Madame Marie so, Louis!"

Inside her room alone, she flung herself on her bed in agony and despair.

"Louis—O, my God!" she cried, and sobbed and sobbed her strength away.