And
in his sleep his father drew himself up suddenly, showing his terrible
white face, and clutched at little Robert Stonehouse, who skirted him
and ran screaming down the dark stairs.
"You can't--you can't--you're dead. I'm grown up--I'm free--I'm not
like you--you can't--you can't----"
But the next morning he was himself again, sure and cool-headed and
cool-hearted. He did not believe that he had suffered or in the
recurrence of that terror.
III
1
Probably she had expected him. It must have seemed to her, so
Stonehouse reflected as he followed the shrivelled old woman down a
passage dim and gorgeous with an expensive and impossible Orientalism,
a natural sequel to his enmity. Men did not hate her--or they did so
at their peril. Then she would be most dangerous. The luckless
Frederick, so the story ran, had snubbed her at a charity bazaar, and
had made fun of her dancing. And he had stolen and finally shot
himself for her sake. Perhaps she thought there was a sort of
inevitability in this programme.
He had to wonder at and even admire the mad splendour of the place.
Her taste was as crude and flamboyant as herself, but it too had
escaped vulgarity which at its worst is imitative of the best, a stupid
second-handness, an aggressive insolent self-distrust. She was not
ashamed of what she was. She was herself all through, and she trusted
herself absolutely. She wanted colour and there was colour.
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