“Safe?” she asked, under her breath.
He looked at her in the same despairing way, but said
nothing.
“Father,” she began, her lips quivering
in the intensity of her inward struggle, “can
you not go away from here? Can you not take mother
away?”
They gazed at each other, each trying to divine what
it was that made the other so pale. Did her father
know?—Maud asked herself. Did Maud
know something more than he himself?—was
the doubt in Paul’s mind. But they were
thinking of different things.
“I can’t, I can’t!” the wretched
man exclaimed, spreading out his arms on the desk.
“Perhaps in a few months—but I doubt.
I can do nothing now; I am helpless; I am not my own
master. O God, if I could but go and leave it
all behind me!”
Maud could only guess at the meaning of this.
He had already hinted to her of business troubles
which were crushing him. But this was a matter
of no moment in her sight. There was something
more terrible, and she could not force her tongue
to speak of it.
“You fear for her?” Paul went on.
“You have noticed her strangeness?” He
lowered his voice. “What can I do, Maud?”
“You are so much away,” she said hurriedly,
laying her hand on his arm. “Her visitors—she
has so many temptations—”
“Temptations?”
“Father, help her against herself!”
“My help is vain. There is a curse on her
life, and on mine. I can only stand by and wait
for the worst.”
She could not speak. It was her duty, clearly
her imperative duty, yet she durst not fulfil it.
She had come down from her room with the fixed purpose,
attained after nights of sleepless struggle, of telling
him what she had seen. She found herself alone
again, the task unfulfilled. And she knew that
she could not face him again.
A GARDEN-PARTY
Waymark received with astonishment Maud’s letter
from Paris. He had seen her only two days before,
and their conversation had been of the ordinary kind;
Maud had given him no hint of her purpose, not even
when he spoke to her of the coming holiday season,
and the necessity of her having a change. She
confessed she was not well. Sometimes, when they
had both sat for some minutes in silence, she would
raise her eyes and meet his gaze steadily, seeming
to search for something. Waymark could not face
this look; it drove him to break the suspense by any
kind of remark on an indifferent subject. He
remembered now that she had gazed at him in that way
persistently on the last evening that they were together.
When he was saying good-bye, and as he bent to kiss
her, she held him back for a moment, and seemed to
wish to say something. Doubtless she had been
on the point of telling him that she was going away;
but she let him leave in silence.
It was not a long letter that she wrote; she merely
said that change had become indispensable to body
and soul, and that it had seemed best to make it suddenly.
