Poor Ronny! What a pale, cynical young ghost started up under that name.
She thought of Lynch, his horsey, matter-of-fact solidity. She had loved
them both--for a time. She thought of the veldt, of Constantia, and the
loom of Table Mountain under the stars; and the first sight of
Jimmy, his straight look, the curve of his crisp head, the kind,
fighting-schoolboy frankness of his face. Even now, after all those
months of their companionship, that long-ago evening at grape harvest,
when she sang to him under the scented creepers, was the memory of him
most charged with real feeling. That one evening at any rate he had
longed for her, eleven: years ago, when she was in her prime. She could
have held her own then; Noel would have come in vain. To think that
this girl had still fifteen years before she would be even in her prime.
Fifteen years of witchery; and then another ten before she was on the
shelf. Why! if Noel married Jimmy, he would be an old man doting on her
still, by the time she had reached this fatal age of forty-four: She
felt as if she must scream, and; stuffing her handkerchief into her
mouth, turned out the light. Darkness cooled her, a little. She pulled
aside the curtains, and let in the moon light. Jimmy and that girl
were out in it some where, seeking each other, if not in body, then in
thought. And soon, somehow, somewhere, they would come together--come
together because Fate meant them to! Fate which had given her young
cousin a likeness to herself; placed her, too, in just such a hopeless
position as appealed to Jimmy, and gave him a chance against younger
men. She saw it with bitter surety. Good gamblers cut their losses!
Yes, and proud women did not keep unwilling lovers! If she had even
an outside chance, she would trail her pride, drag it through the mud,
through thorns! But she had not. And she clenched her fist, and struck
out at the night, as though at the face of that Fate which one could
never reach--impalpable, remorseless, surrounding Fate with its faint
mocking smile, devoid of all human warmth. Nothing could set back the
clock, and give her what this girl had. Time had "done her in," as it
"did in" every woman, one by one. And she saw herself going down the
years, powdering a little more, painting a little more, touching up her
hair, till it was all artifice, holding on by every little device--and
all, to what end? To see his face get colder and colder, hear his voice
more and more const