Page:The Breath of Scandal (1922).djvu/362

 learned what he knew that night. Well, she had learned that and much more; and all that he had imagined happening to her had come—and more. For he never had fancied such a result as that Bill, who had sat so big and strong and upright beside him, would prove to be the one not to come through the trouble.

Gregg was not deluding himself that it was over, because Bill was dead and Marjorie was home again with her father; of course it was not over, he was realizing; nothing can ever be "over" in the sense that its consequences become complete. But they can reach periods of intermission, those consequences, when they give you breath and rest, and a chance to get hold of yourself before once more they hurry you on. And so to-night Gregg, like Marjorie since he had taken her home, grasped at this sensation of pause.

But he did not know that this had come also to her; as he approached her, he tormented himself with his image of her as she struggled with him at the telephone booth of the club when the fear first struck at her; of how he saw her in the vestibule at Number 4689 Clearedge Street, when he had to come down from Mrs. Russell's flat and let Marjorie in and he lied to her; of how she picked up her father's photograph from Mrs. Russell's desk and—knew; of how he saw her come out of her home to speak to Rinderfeld that night he and she walked together by the lake; of how she reëntered her home, in fright; of how he had found her in the office at Cordeen's when he came to tell her how Billy had died.

Quiet was Evanston this evening, and particularly still was that neighborhood of the Hales'; here at last was the big, wide-verandahed home, gray in the dusk and half hidden behind its trees, through which shone