He
thought of her terrified eyes, of her self-reproaches, of her
entreaties, perhaps.
"I wish Evelyn would tell her," he murmured aloud, and he went to the
window. "Surely it would be better if I were never to see her again."
It was a long and agonizing night, despite all his resolutions. The gray
morning, appearing palely over the river and the bridges, found him
still pacing up and down there, with nothing settled at all, no letter
written, no memoranda made. All that the night had done was to increase
a hundred-fold his dread of meeting Natalie. And now the daylight only
told him that that interview was coming nearer. It had become a question
of hours.
At last, worn out with fatigue and despair, he threw himself on a couch
hard by, and presently sunk into a broken and troubled sleep. For now
the mind, emancipated from the control of the will, ran riot; and the
quick-changing pictures that were presented to him were full of fearful
things that shook his very life with terror. Awake he could force
himself to think of this or that; asleep, he was at the mercy of this
lurid imagination that seemed to dye each successive scene in the hue of
blood.
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