It was obvious enough that Mrs. Rossiter had herself, during the last week,
been in no easy mind. From the first glances at Peter and Bobby she seemed
to understand everything, for, instantly, at that glimpse of their faces
she became, for the first time in her life, perhaps, a personality, a
figure, something defined and outlined.
Her face was suddenly grey. She hesitated back against the door and, with
her face on Peter, said in a whisper, to Bobby:
"What--what has happened?"
Bobby was not inclined to spare her. As an onlooker during these last
months he felt that she, perhaps, was more guiltily responsible for the
catastrophe than any other human being.
"Clare," he said, trying to fix her eyes. "She's gone off to Cardillac--to
Paris."
Then he was himself held by the tragedy of those two faces. They faced each
other across the room. Peter, with eyes and a mouth that were not his, eyes
not sane, the eyes of no human being, mouth smiling, drawn tight like a
razor's edge, with his hands spread out against the wall, watched Mrs.
Rossiter.
Mrs. Rossiter, at Bobby's words, had huddled up, suddenly broken, only her
eyes, in her great foolish expressionless face, stung to an agony to which
the rest of her body could not move.
Her little soul--a tiny scrap of a thing in that vague prison of dull
flesh--was suddenly wounded, desperately hurt by the only weapon that could
ever have found it.
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