Above all pulsated the deep, sapphire blue of an Italian
sky.
The pictured garden faded and Cara turned slowly back into the room. Her
eyes looked sad.
"Poor Eliot!" she said. "It's all ancient history now. But one wishes it
was possible to give him back his happiness."
When she had gone, Ann lay thinking over the story she had just heard.
So it was all true, then--the tale that Eliot had been jilted years ago!
It threw a vivid flash of illumination on the many complexities she had
come up against in his character. The two women who should mean most in a
man's life had both failed him. He bore on his body a scar which surely he
must never see reflected in the mirror without recalling the travesty of
motherhood that was all he had ever known. And scored into his soul, hidden
beneath a bitter reticence and unforgiving cynicism, lay the still deeper
scar of that hurt which the woman who was to have been his wife had dealt
him.
Ann's annoyance with him because he hadn't troubled to call personally to
ascertain how she was melted away in a rush of pitying comprehension. She
was conscious of an intense anger against that unknown woman who had so
marred his life.
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