Page:Dark Hester.djvu/291

her eye passing over Clive who lay turned from her on his pillows, it looked almost as denuded as then, like a bright modern room in a shop-window. Hester’s bed of painted wood might never have been occupied, so accurately drawn above so flat a surface was its cover of putty and flame and black; her dressing-table was empty of all appurtenances; the cupboards in the walls were neatly closed; the chairs stood in their appointed places; even the bright little fire, lighted for the invalid, might have been an imitation fire; it carried out the colouring scheme as accurately as the flame and putty and purple of the pictures on the walls in their broad black frames. Yet though it was denuded Clive did not look abandoned in it. A glass of water, a vase of late roses, his letters unopened, and the folded morning paper lay on the table beside him. He had only to get up, to make a gesture, to take up the new life to which Hester was leaving him, in order to break through the bright magic that seemed to surround him.

His mother scrutinized him and noted that though he seemed almost sleeping, the hand lying out on the sheet was tightly clenched. ‘What is it?’ he said. He thought it was the maid.

‘Clive dear ———’ She advanced from the door,