THE STEADFAST HEART
For weeks now her nerves had been excited, taut, tingling. She had lived under a strain, under the shadow of tragedy—and Malcolm Crane’s brashness had precipitated a climax…. His conduct had thrown him out of her life. It needed but some such occurrence to have brought this about sooner or later—or, perhaps, no occurrence whatever, for now she confessed to herself that she could never have gone through with it, never have become his wife. She hated Mal—who did not deserve it, but such is the logic of the miserable. Hers had been the blame; she had sought to use him for a purpose—a purpose which could not but make him hateful to her…. A prisoner comes to abhor the walls which confine him, and Lydia had used Malcolm for her confining walls—to shut her away from Angus Burke.
So she listened to Angus Burke’s voice, strained her ear to catch his every word, and begrudged the others their part in the talk. His voice called to her, sung to her, urged her to come… to come. There was no Ulysses-wax with which to shut her ears. Her yearning to see him, to be with him, to feel his presence, wracked her like physical pain…. He was so near! It would be so easy.
She strained back as though a physical arm were striving to drag her to the door; she bit her
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