Page:Possession (1926).pdf/151

 It was the first time in all their life together that he had ever done anything so romantic, so beautiful, and Ellen, looking down at him in a kind of amazement, must have understood that there were forces at work quite beyond her comprehension—something which, for the moment, overwhelmed even his shame of love. The act, by its very suddenness, appeared to strike a response in the girl herself, for she leaned toward him and fell to stroking his hair.

"I didn't know," she said softly, "that you could be like this. . . . It frightens me. . . . I didn't know."

His arms slowly held her more and more tightly, in a kind of fierce desperation. "You won't go," he murmured, "you won't leave me. . . . There would be nothing left for me . . . nothing in the world."

"I'll come back to you. . . . It won't be for long. Perhaps, if there is money enough you could go with me."

But all the same, she was troubled by that simple act of affection. Somehow, she had never thought of his love in this fashion.

The rest of the evening was raised upon a different plane, new and strange in their existence together. Some barrier, invisible as it was potent, had given way suddenly, out of Clarence's dread of the future it seemed that there was born a new and unaccountable happiness. Ellen, watching him slyly with a look of new tenderness, played for him the simple music which he loved.

But at midnight when, at last, the music came to an end Clarence asked, "Where are you going to play to-morrow?"

"At the house of a Mrs. Callendar . . . I don't know who she is."

"If it's Mrs. Richard Callendar . . . she's rich and fashionable. One of the richest women in New York. . . . Rich and fashionable. . . ." But the rest was lost in a sudden return of a bitterness that seized him of late with a growing frequency. He knew of Mrs. Callendar. Wyck, in his snobbery, had spoken of her. One saw her name in the journals. It may have been