Page:Glitter (1926).pdf/307

 glass with the light bulbs studding its edges like tiny fires, her face stared out at her. Fixed. Tragic-eyed. Only the eyes seemed living. The rest was just a surface, whitened here, painted there, with the red-gold waves of hair to form its frame. She examined this image with a curious intensity. "Oh, my dear," she choked at last, and covered her eyes with her palms so that she might not witness her own pain. ..

For a year, she had foreseen this moment. She had known herself to be nearing it, one halt unwilling footstep every day. In endless hours of solitary argument she had sought to put herself in readiness to meet it. She had said to herself, "You can't have him. He's not for such as you. You know that. He refuses to see it, even though you've told him, but you know. Make up your mind to it. Take this little year, and thank whatever gods there be you had that much." . . . She whispered these things now, again and again, her lips stirring ever so slightly, like red petals breathed upon. But she found no solace in them.

She felt that the gods were unnecessarily brutal. Could she have made this sacrifice so that Jock would know it was a sacrifice, she might have done it valiantly, upheld by the thought that throughout his life he would look back on her with gratitude. But it could not be made in such way, lest it defeat its own end. And instead, when it was over, he would despise her with all his strong young soul. . . and never know. ..

She was shaken by a sort of spasm, that quivered the ostrich-feather trimming on her evening gown and twitched the flesh of her uncovered back and arms. Its passing left her calm. She dropped her hands. The eyes that looked out at her now were steely, inscrutable—eyes of one long schooled to derry outwardly her inward feeling. The vivid lips were steady and a