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She had left the decanter on its stand, and he made a movement toward
it. Then, with a half smile, he picked it up and walked to the window
with it. He was still smiling, half boyishly, as he put out his light
and got into bed. It had occurred to him that the milkman's flivver,
driving in at the break of dawn, would encounter considerable glass.
By morning, after a bad night, he had made a sort of double-headed
resolution, that he was through with booze, as he termed it, and that
he would find out how he stood with Elizabeth. But for a day or two no
opportunity presented itself. When he called there was always present
some grave-faced sympathizing visitor, dark clad and low of voice, and
over the drawing-room would hang the indescribable hush of a house
in mourning. It seemed to touch Elizabeth, too, making her remote and
beyond earthly things. He would go in, burning with impatience, hungry
for the mere sight of her, fairly overcharged with emotion, only to face
that strange new spirituality that made him ashamed of the fleshly urge
in him.
Once he found Clare Rossiter there, and was aware of something electric
in the air. After a time he identified it. Behind the Rossiter girl's
soft voice and sympathetic words, there was a veiled hostility. She
was watching Elizabeth, was overconscious of her. And she was, for some
reason, playing up to himself. He thought he saw a faint look of relief
on Elizabeth's face when Clare at last rose to go.
"I'm on my way to see the man Dick Livingstone left in his place,"
Clare said, adjusting her veil at the mirror. "I've got a cold. Isn't it
queer, the way the whole Livingstone connection is broken up?"
"Hardly queer. And it's only temporary."
"Possibly. But if you ask me, I don't believe Dick will come back. Mind,
I don't defend the town, but it doesn't like to be fooled. And he's
fooled it for years. I know a lot of people who'd quit going to him."
She turned to Wallie.
"He isn't David's nephew, you know. The question is, who is he? Of
course I don't say it, but a good many are saying that when a man takes
a false identity he has something to hide."
She gave them no chance to reply, but sauntered out with her
sex-conscious, half-sensuous walk. Outside the door her smile faded,
and her face was hard and bitter. She might forget Dick Livingstone,
but never would she forgive herself for her confession to Elizabeth, nor
Elizabeth for having heard it.