It was a terrible laugh to come from a child's lips. It was
a woman's pride, drowning at the bottom of her heart, and in its last
struggle for preservation sending up these bubbles of sound.
We talk of tragic scenes in common life; this was one of them. The
little room with its waxed, inlaid floor, the light falling bloodily in
at the crimson curtains and throwing unreal shadows upon the spent fire,
the disordered furniture, the unmade bed; and there were the two actors,
suffering in their little sphere what only _seems_ more suffering in
prisons and upon scaffolds, and playing with each other's agonies as not
more refined cruelty plays with racks and tortures.
"You are pleased, madame," said Ralph.
"No, I am wondering what has changed you. There are black circles around
your eyes; you have not shaved; the bones of your cheeks are sharp like
your chin, and you are yellow and bent like a dry leaf."
"I have had an excess of money lately. Being free to do as I like, I
have done so."
She looked furtively around the room. "Somebody has gone away from here
this morning--is it true?"
He laughed suggestively.
"I saw you with two girls last night; the company did you honor; it was
one of them, perhaps."
"You guess shrewdly," he replied.
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