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Read Ebook: The Immortal Moment: The Story of Kitty Tailleur by Sinclair May Phillips Coles Illustrator
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Ebook has 588 lines and 12600 words, and 12 pages
It possessed her now; and under its dominion she was uplifted, carried along. Her mind moved toward it with a reckless rocking speed, the perilous certainty of the insane.
At five o'clock she rang the bell and asked the servant to bring her some tea. She swallowed a little with a jerk of her throat, and put the cup down, shuddering. It brought her a sickening memory of yesterday.
At five o'clock she got up and dressed herself and sent a message to Robert Lucy to see her downstairs in her sitting-room, alone. As she stood at her glass she said to herself, "How shocking I look. But he won't mind."
At six he was with her.
She drew her hand away from his as if his touch had hurt her. Her smile was the still, bloodless smile that comes with pain. She drew her chair back out of the sunlight, in the recess by the fireplace. He stood beside her then, looking at her with eyes that loved her the more for the sad hurt to her beauty. His manner recalled the shy, adolescent uncertainty of his first approaches.
"Don't you think," he said, "you ought to have stayed in bed?"
She shook her head and struggled to find her voice. It came convulsively.
"No. I'm better. I'm all right now."
"It was being out in that beastly hot sun yesterday--with those youngsters. You're not used to it."
She laughed. "No. I'm not used to it. Robert--you haven't told them, have you?"
"What?"
"About you--and me?"
"No. Not yet." He smiled. "I say, I shall have to tell them very soon, shan't I?"
"You needn't."
He made some inarticulate sound that questioned her.
"I've changed my mind. I can't marry you."
He had to bend his head to catch her low, indistinct murmur; but he caught it.
He drew back from her, and leaned against the chimneypiece and looked at her more intently than before.
"Yes."
He looked down.
"Poor Kitty," he said. "You think I'm asking too much of you?"
She did not answer.
"You're afraid?"
"I told you I was afraid."
"Yes. But I thought it was all right. I thought you liked them."
She was silent. Tears rose to her eyes and hung on their unsteady lashes.
"They like you."
She bowed her head and the tears fell.
"Is that what has upset you?"
"Yes."
"I see. You've been thinking it over and you find you can't stand it. I don't wonder. You've let those little monkeys tire you out. You've nearly got a sunstroke and you feel as if you'd rather die than go through another day like yesterday? Well, you shan't. There'll never be another day like yesterday."
"No. Never," she said; and her sobs choked her.
"Why should there be? They'll have a governess. You don't suppose I meant you to have them on your hands all the time?"
She went on crying softly. He sat on the arm of her chair and put his arm round her and dried her eyes.
"Don't be unhappy about it, Kitty. I understand. You're not marrying them, dear; you're marrying me."
She broke loose from him.
"I can't marry you," she cried. "I can't give you what you want."
"Do you mean that you can't care for me? Is that what you're trying to tell me all the time?"
He moved and she cowered back into her chair.
He had turned from her. He was leaning his arms along the mantelshelf; he had bowed his head on them.
They remained for some minutes so; she cowering back; he with his face hidden from her.
"That I care for? No, Robert, there's no one."
"Are you quite sure? Quite honest. Think."
"Do you mean Wilfrid Marston?"
"Yes."
He raised his head at that; but he did not look at her.
"Thank God!" he said.
"Do you think as badly of him as all that?"
"Don't ask me what I think of him."
"Would you think badly of me if I'd married him?"
"I--I couldn't have stood it, Kitty."
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