At last—
“Please kiss me, Saint Michael,” she said.
For a moment he hesitated, a half-rueful, half-whimsical
smile on his lips, rather as though he were laughing
at himself. Then, with a shrug of his shoulders,
he stooped quickly and kissed her.
“Witch-child!” he muttered as he strode
away through the woods.
THE SEED OF EVIL
Diane sat in the twilight, brooding. Winter had
come round again, gripping the world with icy fingers,
and she shivered a little as she crouched in front
of the fire.
She felt cold—cold in body and soul.
The passage of time had brought no cheery warmth of
love or loving-kindness to her starved heart, and the
estrangement between herself and Hugh was as definite
and absolute as it had been the day Catherine quitted
Coverdale for the Sisterhood of Penitence.
But the years which had elapsed since then had taken
their inevitable toll. Hugh had continued along
the lines he had laid down for himself, rigidly ascetic
and austere, and his mode of life now revealed itself
unmistakably in his thin, emaciated face and eyes ablaze
with fanatical fervour.
Diane, thrust into a compulsory isolation utterly
foreign to her temperament, debarred the fulfilment
of her womanhood which her spontaneous, impetuous
nature craved, had drooped and pined, gradually losing
both her buoyant spirit and her health in the loveless
atmosphere to which her husband had condemned her.
She had so counted on the prospect that a better understanding
between herself and Hugh would ensue after Catherine’s
departure that the downfall of her hopes had come
upon her as a bitter disappointment. Once she
had stifled her pride and begged him to live no longer
as a stranger to her. But he had repulsed her
harshly, refusing her pleading with an inexorable
decision there was no combating.
Afterwards she had given herself up to despair, and
gradually—almost imperceptibly at first—her
health had declined until finally, at the urgent representations
of Virginie, Hugh had called in Dr. Lancaster.
“There is no specific disease,” he had
said. “But none the less”—looking
very directly at Hugh—“your wife is
dying, Vallincourt.”
Diane had been told the first part of the doctor’s
pronouncement, and recommended by her husband to “rouse
herself” out of her apathetic state.
“‘No specific disease!’” she
repeated bitterly, as she sat brooding in the firelight.
“No—only this death in life which
I have had to endure. Well, it will be over soon—and
the sooner the better.”
The door burst open suddenly and Magda came in to
the room, checking abruptly, with a child’s
stumbling consciousness of pain, as she caught sight
of her mother curled up in front of the fire, staring
mutely into its glowing heart.
“Maman?” she begin timidly. “Petite
maman?”
