Her hands gripped the arm of her chair convulsively, and
slowly and fearfully she turned her head in the direction whence came the
voice. Coventry was standing on the threshold of the room. A strangled cry
broke from her, and she sat staring at him with wild, incredulous eyes.
For a moment the room seemed to fill with a grey, swirling mist, blurring
the outlines of the furniture and the figure of the man who stood there
silently in the doorway. Then the mist cleared away, and she could see his
eyes bent on her with an expression of such stark bitterness and despair
and longing that it hurt her to look at him. Was this her lover--who had
left her in such fierce scorn and anger only a few short months ago? This
man whose face was worn and ravaged with an intensity of suffering such
as she had not dreamed possible! If she had grown thin in paying for that
bitter parting, then he must have paid a hundredfold to be so terribly
marred and altered.
"Eliot!" The word came stammeringly from her lips--hushed as one hushes the
voice only in the presence of a great grief or of death itself. She bent
her head, unwilling to look again on that soul's agony so nakedly revealed.
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