Page:Possession (1926).pdf/254

 She kept silent. Perhaps to these crow-like women, Clarence had been a brilliant and powerful figure.

In the Babylon Arms there was little to be done. Ellen paid a visit for the first time to the offices of the Superba Electrical Company and there learned that Clarence had stolen money which he collected and failed to deliver. The amount was something over fifteen hundred dollars. When she heard it she murmured, "It was so little too! Why, I could have paid it if he had told me. To have killed himself for so little!"

But she knew, of course, that if he had confessed he would have destroyed that splendid creature which he fancied he had created in her eyes. He had preferred himself to be destroyed. In death it would not matter that she discovered the fraud: he would not have to face her.

She paid the money, out of her savings and out of the amount brought by the sale of the furniture. She sold even the piano he had bought her as a wedding gift. And when she had finished there remained but little more than a hundred dollars.

On the very day the furniture was being taken from the flat she told Fergus the whole truth concerning her plans. They sat together amid the wreckage, brother and sister, both understanding for perhaps the first time that they were faced by the new problem of Hattie Tolliver. Both knew that she had set her mind upon coming to them, and having tasted freedom, neither was willing now to turn back.

"There is Ma," said Ellen. "I don't know what's to be done about her. She'll be coming here to live before long and I won't be here. She's worked all these years to come where she can be near us and now I've got to go away. I'm going to Paris. . . . It's the only thing left."

Fergus looked at her. "But you don't know French," he said, "and you haven't any money."

"I can't turn back now. If I went back to Ma, it would be the end of me. I know that. I couldn't. . . . I couldn't ever