"Now you have discovered the fatal truth you can save yourself more
trouble in the future." She emphatically switched off a light beside
her, leaving him standing in a sole unsparing illumination. Yet in her
extreme resentment she was, he recognized, rubbing Vaseline into her
finger nails, her final nightly rite. Then there was silence where once
he had kissed her with a reluctance to lose her in even the short
oblivion of sleep.
* * * * *
Throughout Monday, at his office, Lee Randon thought at uncomfortable
intervals of the late incipient scenes with Fanny. They had quarrels--
who hadn't?--but they had usually ended in Fanny shedding some tears
that warmly recemented their deep affections. This latter time,
however, she had not wept--at the point of dissolving into the old
surrender she had turned away from him, both in reality and
metaphorically, and fallen asleep in an unexpected cold reserve. He was
sorry, for it brought into their relationship a definite new quality of
difference. He was aware of the thorough inconsistency of his attitude
toward their marriage; again two opposed forces were present in him--
one, Fanny, as, bound to her, he knew and cherished; and the other--the
devil take the other!
He was organizing a new company, and, figuring impatiently, he pressed
the button for Mrs. Wald, his secretary.
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