the stillness.

An exquisite picture of Viola laughed joyously back at me from a
little table covered with vases of white flowers, white as she had
been that first night at the studio....

O God in heaven, what _had_ I done to bring this ruin into my own
life? _Had_ I deserved it? Had I? I thought wildly.

What had I done? What did it all mean? Veronica? A few kisses? the
impulse of passion? It was nothing, everything was nothing to me
beside Viola. She must have known that. Then I recalled her appeals to
me. She had asked me to give up Veronica, why had I not done so?
Instead, how had I met Viola; how had I answered her? My own words
were hurled back upon me by memory and fell upon me like blows, so had
they fallen upon her. How could I have been so mad, so blind?

Her favourite chair was pushed a little from the fire; by its side I
noticed something white, and stooped mechanically to pick it up. It
was her handkerchief, crushed together and soaked through and through.
How she must have been crying to wet it like that! At the corner it
was marked with blood, as if she had pressed it to bitten lips.

My own eyes filled with scorching tears as I looked at it.

It was the one sign of the passion and agony that had raged in that
room before I came back.

If I had only returned sooner! I put the handkerchief in my breast,
and took up her letter again. Could I do anything, anything now to
follow, to recall her?

I looked at the clock, and ice seemed to close round my heart and
chill it. It was already eleven. Then the phrase about the other room
struck me. Could she have possibly returned? I opened the door and
went upstairs and through all the rooms in the house. All were empty.
I saw the bedroom farthest from mine had been put ready for occupancy,
and some few trifles of her own taken from our room and put into it.
Then I came back, sick with apprehension, to the drawing-room again,
questioning what I could do.

To whom would she have gone? As the thought came all the blood in my
body seemed to seethe and rage, but the question had to be faced. For
a moment no definite idea would form itself. Then the recollection of
Lawton dashed in upon me. The man's head seemed photographed suddenly
on all the pale walls round me; handsome, brilliant, engaging, well
born, and well bred, he was the man of all others surely to attract
her.

She would go to him, they would dine together, she would return to
his chambers with h