He had
said that it had to be, that there was no escape now; and at his words
she had felt every pulse in her body throbbing, every vein expanding with
a hot life which thrilled and tortured her. Life had been so meagre and
so dull, and the man who had worshipped her on the Antoine now worshipped
himself only, and also Zoe, the child, maybe; or so she thought; while
the man who had once possessed her whole mind and whole heart, and never
her body, back there in Spain, he, Carvillho Gonzales, would have loved
her to the end, in scenes where life had colour and passion and danger
and delightful movement.
She was one of those happy mortals who believe that the dead and gone
lover was perfect, and that in losing him she was losing all that life
had in store; but the bare, hard truth was that her Gonzales could have
been true neither to her nor to any woman in the world for longer than
one lingering year, perhaps one lunar month. It did not console her--she
did not think of it-that the little man on the seat of the red wagon,
chirruping with their daughter, had been, would always be, true to her.
Of what good was fidelity if he that was faithful desired no longer as he
once did?
A keen observer would have seen in the glowing, unrestful look, in the
hot cheek, in the interlacing fingers, that a contest was going on in the
woman's soul, as she drove homeward with all that was her own in the
world.
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