Page:Possession (1926).pdf/235

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apprising the world of the fact that Thérèse Callendar had sailed as usual to spend the remainder of the year abroad. But there was nothing said of the girl whom the world had seen lunching with Richard Callendar in Sherry's. She was talked of, to be sure, in the circles in which Mrs. Champion and the Virgins, Mrs. Mallinson and the Apostle to the Genteel, were shining lights. They agreed that it must have been the clever Thérèse who disposed of the girl (perhaps paid her well) and made the match she desired; and they predicted with some satisfaction an unhappy life for Sabine. But Sabine in the end had won her game of patience, though she never knew the reason.

34

IT was in the weeks which followed the final meeting that Ellen came really to suffer. Together there in the shabby little room she had been sustained by the very struggle between them, by all the excitement that warmed and strengthened her. Now that he was gone forever, he kept returning to her in a fashion more terrifying than he had ever been in the flesh. Even at night when she lay in the apple green bed, so near and yet remote from Clarence, trying always to conceal from him the faintest suspicion, she could not free her memory from the sound of his voice and the persuasion of his hands. The memory of him haunted her, so that she grew pale and thin and Clarence, filled as always with nervous anxiety, urged her to go away into the country. In moments of depression she even reproached herself with being a fool for having thrown away what Callendar could have given her . . . his wealth, which she needed, the place which he could have given her in the world. Indeed when life seemed altogether hopeless, she went so far as to contemplate a return to the Town, a thing she had sworn never to do save in triumph.

Clarence, understanding dimly that she was unhappy, sought to help her with a kindness that hurt her more deeply than any