Review of Reciews, 1/11106. 



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511 



She was never tired. It is the sislit. the thought of Effie 

 and her love that have shalien her. Acted out before her 

 eyes, here is all she has missed — lost without sense of 

 loss — unthought of till now. 



Still although conscious of having lost love out of 

 her lift', Sybil does not in any way associate her 

 distress with any personal feeling about Stone. 



It was otherwise with Stone. He loathed the 

 prospect of his marriage with E^ffie, and in a mo- 

 ment of impulse he tells Sybil that " it is going to be 

 a damnable mistake." '' I swear I'd never thought 

 of it till he spoke to me." 



Thus the long imprisoned secret came to be 

 revealed. 



Effie is going away for a fortnight to London. On 

 the eve of her departure Sybil goes into the work- 

 room to get a card from the register for her hus- 

 band. 



But stone has followed her— talking in a hard, dry Toice. 

 ' That is not the place— we put it. In the upper drawer— I 

 think. You — you won't find it there:" and. as he stands 

 behind her, she hears his fast breathing. 



Her fingers shake in the drawer, and she cannot answer. 



■ Can't you find it?'' And he stoops beside her till his 

 face touches hers. 



" Oh, please don't." 



It is the feeble half-whimpering appeal of a child, not 

 the protest of a woman of thirty-three, as he takes her in 

 his arms and kisses her on the eyes and forehead. Her 

 head has .sunk, so that be cannot reach her lips. It seems 

 as if she would sink through his arms to the floor. Then 

 he tarns her with her back to the bookshelves, and holds 

 her against him. 



" Kiss me. Kiss me." 



In a breathless whisper he says it — a commaDd rather 

 than an entreaty. 



And .slowly the open wavering lips turn to his. and she 

 obeys him. Her fac« is cold as death; she is limp as a 

 rag; and, in sudden fear that she is about to faint, he 

 takes her from the wall, and, with one arm round her, 

 draws her away. 



■" We must go back. You must go back. I'll follow. My 

 darling. I love you so— I love you 30." 



Then she goes back into the other room — stopping in 

 the hall to look at herself in the mirror above the Lowes- 

 toft bowl. Eflie is still playing. Her husband, on the 

 aofa, looks up and smiles. Presently Stone comes in with 

 the envelope; gives the paper to his employer; then sits 

 in his accustomed place near the piano. Their life goes on. 

 This monstrous betiayal has occurred, and the quiet 

 room is unchanged. She is wrapped in flame, and the 

 quiet life goes on. 



It was the awakening — she understood. For a 

 moment she was horror-stricken bv the baseness of 

 t the fall, then she was lost to everything without 

 thought except for her love. 



Her husband is but a kindly grey-haired man with 

 whom she had been dead, till lips pressed to hers 

 brought her to life. As she thought of it, joy in life 

 filled her throat with song. He is hers, not Effie's. 

 And so she sings her song of glory in life and love. 

 She was dead, and she has come to life, and the 

 face in the glass is transfigured and glorified, taking 

 a new and noble dignity in her wondering eyes. 



So it began. If only it had stopped there ! But 

 it did not. The lovers appear for one delirious fort- 

 night to have abandoned themselves to the utter- 

 most expression of passion. She has given herself 

 to her love with an abandonment so absolute that 

 already it almost frightens him. Her struggles to 

 forget all things, except the love-warmed hour ; 

 yet e\'en while he is locked in her embrace, the 

 .thought of the man he has wronged chills his 



blood. As a knife shame stabs him. But she 

 seems to have forgotten what shame is, or never to 

 have known. She is without regret, without re- 

 morse. She is wrapped in soft flames. If for a 

 moment a thought of the treason comes, it has only 

 this power — to make the joy fiercer and yet more 

 sweetly dear. Night after night, after she has read 

 her husband to sleep, when all the house has been 

 blotted out in night and sleep, she glides in through 

 a door of fire, and then in the darkness seeks her 

 love with open arms. 



Effie comes back, but the liaison goes on. Bur- 

 goyne gets a chill, and is laid up with multiple 

 neuritis. He becomes paralysed in his lower limbs, 

 lies like a mummy motionless in bed ; and his wife, 

 to whom he gives a heart of diamonds on the an- 

 niversary of their marriage day, pities him, but 

 continues her relations with Stone. " The chain of 

 the flesh held her. Her love held her in chains of 

 fire." She did not want her husband to die; but 

 she could not help brooding over the possibility. 

 Stone was sure he would die, and told her so, while 

 she sobbed and shivered in his arms. At last the 

 climax comes. 



Burgovne sleeps in his darkened room. '' Motion- 

 less he lies as a stone knight — the white crusader 

 sleeping for ever on the white tomb.' With this 

 image in her mind, as she stands in the shadow 

 watchuig him, her heart melts in pity and remorse ; 

 " but the chain of the flesh holds fast — holds her in 

 the bondage of her shameful love." 



From the white crusader on the white tomb she 

 flies to her lover's arms. The house is hushed at 

 midnight, " for a moment firelight flickered redly on 

 the empty chair, the leather couch, the lovers locked 

 in each other's arms. Then again the darkness 

 dropped its veils to hide this shameful secret of the 

 night.'' 



Suddenly the guilty pair are startled by a footfall. 

 The scene which follows is the most thrilling in the 

 book. Sybil was scared horribly at the thought of 

 discovery : — 



Her black hair, tumbling loose about her shoulders, 

 hung nearly to her waist; with a shaking hand she 

 clutched at her loose wrapper where it lay open at ler 

 throat, and her white face in the midst of the dark hair 

 for a momeiit looked like a staring, senseless mask. 



They seek to hide. In vain. The footsteps 

 sounded slow, shuffling, and dragging, most horrible 

 to hear. The paralysed husband had risen from 

 his white tomb, and was tracking his false wife to 

 her hiding place. " It was as though a dead man 

 had risen, as though 



the monstrous wickedness of their crime had cried aloud 

 in the silence of the night and brouiht the dead men from 

 their graves." 



Inside the room, panic, terror. Her face is a 

 staring mask, wide-eyed, open-mouthed, as she clings 

 and crouches, listening, waiting, shaking in ever\ 

 limb, while the man of stone is coming through the 

 darkness to the door. 



