Verrian.
Oh--Goodnight!" She faced him evanescently in going out, with the woman
after her, but, whether she did so more in fear or more in defiance, she
left him standing motionless in his doubt, and she did nothing to solve
his doubt when she came quickly back alone, before he was aware of having
moved, to say, "Mr. Verrian, I want to--I have to--tell you that
--I didn't think you were the actor." Then she was finally gone, and
Verrian had nothing for it but to go up to his room with the book he
found he had in his hand and must have had there all the time.
If he had read it, the book would not have eased him off to sleep, but he
did not even try, to read it. He had no wish to sleep. The waking dream
in which he lost himself was more interesting than any vision of slumber
could have been, and he had no desire to end it. In that he could still
be talking with the girl whose mystery appealed to him so pleasingly.
It was none the less pleasing because, at what might be called her first
blushes, she did not strike him as altogether ingenuous, but only able to
discipline herself into a final sincerity from a consciousness which had
been taught wisdom by experience.
She was still a scarcely recovered invalid, and it was pathetic that she
should be commencing the struggle of life with strength so little
proportioned to the demand upon it; and the calling she had taken up was
of a fantasticality in some aspects which was equally pathetic.
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