Only
morning light never followed them. And she had seen them stay and grow
and deepen and darken. Shadow over the eyes of the man, shadow round his
lips, shadow like a cloud upon the forehead, shadow over the picture
painted by the soul, working through the features, that we call
expression. Many times had she seen the journey taken by a man's face
to that haunted bourne, arrived at which it is scarcely any more a man's
face, but only a mask expressive of one, or of many, sins. Had Julian
then definitely set foot upon that journey? As yet the shadow that lay
over him was no more than the lightest film, suggestive of a slightly
unnatural and forbidding fatigue. Yet Cuckoo shrank from it as from a
ghost.
"Why, Cuckoo, your hand is trembling!" Julian said.
"Oh, I was out late last night," she answered, putting the teapot hastily
down. And they talked on, pretending there were only two of them and no
shadowy third.
Julian, having returned at last to the Marylebone Road, fell into his
old habit of coming there often. And each time that he came the lady of
the feathers counted a fresh step on his hideous journey towards the
haunted bourne. Yet she never spoke of the dreary addition sum she was
doing. She never reproached Julian, or wept, or let him see that her
heart was growing cold as a pilgrim who kneels, bare, in long prayers
upon the steps of a shrine.
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