Waldeaux reached Vannes at nightfall. At last!
Here was the place in this great empty world where he
was.
When the diligence entered the courtyard, George was so
near to the gate that the smoke of his cigar was
blown into her face, but he did not see her. He was lean
and pale, and his eyes told his misery. When she saw
them his mother grew sick from head to foot with a sudden
nausea. This was his wife's doing. She was killing him!
Frances hurried into the inn, her legs giving way under
her. She could not speak to him. She must think what to
do.
She was taken to her room. It was dark, and across the
corridor she saw Lisa in her lighted chamber. This was
good luck! God had put the creature at once into her
hands to deal with!
She was conscious of a strange exaltation, as if from
wine--as if she would never need to sleep nor eat again.
Her thoughts came and went like flashes of fire. She
watched Lisa as she would a vampire, a creeping deadly
beast. Pauline Felix--all that was adulterous and vile
in women--there it was!
Her mind too, as never before, was full of a haughty
complacency in herself. She felt like the member of some
petty sect who is sure that God communes with him inside
of his altar rails, while the man is outside whom he
believes that God made only to be damned.
Lisa began to undress. Frances quickly turned away,
ashamed of peeping into her chamber. But the one fact
burned on into her brain:
The woman was killing George.
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