The coffee was strong. Mrs. Breckenridge found it soothing to
rasped nerves and tired body, and after the dinner things had been
cleared away she sat on beside the library fire, under the soft
arc of light from the library lamp, sipping the stimulating fluid,
and staring at the snapping and flashing logs.
A sense of merely physical well-being crept through her body, and
for a little time even her active brain was quieter; she forgot
the man now heavily sleeping upstairs, the pretty little tyrant
who had rushed off to dinner at the Chases', and the many
perplexing elements in her own immediate problem. She saw only the
quiet changes in the fire as yellow flame turned to blue--sank,
rose, and sank again.
The house was still. Kitchenward, to be sure, there was a great
deal of cheerful laughter and chatter, as Ellie, sitting heavily
ensconced in the largest rocker, embroidered a centrepiece for her
sister's birthday, Annie read fortunes in the teacups, Alfred
imitated the supercilious manner of a lady who had called that
afternoon upon Mrs. Breckenridge, and Helda, a milk-blond Dane
with pink-rimmed eyes, laughed with infantile indiscrimination at
everything, blushing an agonized scarlet whenever Alfred's
admiring eye met her own.
But the kitchen was not within hearing distance of the quiet room
where Rachael sat alone, and as the soft spring night wore on no
sound came to disturb her revery. It was not the first solitary
evening she had had of late, for Clarence had been more than
usually reckless, and was developing in his wife, although she did
not realize it herself, a habit of introspection quite foreign to
her real nature.
She had never been a thoughtful woman, her days for many years had
run brilliantly on the surface of life, she knew not whence the
current was flowing, nor why, nor where it led her; she did not
naturally analyze, nor dispute events. Only a few years ago she
would have said that to an extraordinary degree fortune had been
kind to her. She had been born with an adventurous spirit, she had
played her game well and boldly, and, according to all the
standards of her type, she had won. But sitting before this quiet
fire, perhaps it occurred to her to wonder how it happened that
there were no more hazards, no more cards left to play. She was
caught in a net of circumstances too tight for her unravelling.
Truly it might be cut, but when she stood in the loose wreckage of
it--how should she use her freedom? If it was a cage, at least it
was a comfortable cage; at least it was better than the howling
darkness of the unfamiliar desert beyond.