My soul, my heart, declare
that it's a lie. There were such differences. My husband loved music;
this man hated it; yet had the power to use it as a means of tormenting
me. But I needn't dwell on the evidences of change. Suffice it to say
that the thing that crushed me, the thing that has brought me down into
the dust where I am, dust of cowardice, and weakness, and impotence to
do or to be anything, was the horror of awakening to a knowledge of that
change, of having to live as wife with this devil, whom I knew not, who
was a stranger to me. Only the features were my husband's, nothing else.
I got rid of a stranger. The man found dead in the Euston Road was a
stranger whom I hated, nothing more to me than that."
As she spoke, in a deep, resonant voice that pulsated through the room,
Dr. Levillier recalled, almost with a thrill, Julian's words to him in
Harley Street, on the night of the _fracas_ with the mastiffs, words
spoken about the dead Marr: "His face dead was the most absolutely direct
contradiction possible to his face alive. He was not the same man." He
recalled these words and the thought shot through his mind: "Did the man
this woman loved return at the moment of death?"
And that change in Valentine!
He said to Mrs.
Pages:
539
540
541
542
543
544
545
546
547
548
549
550
551
552
553
554
555
556
557
558
559
560
561
562
563