Possession (Bromfield)/Chapter 55
NEARLY three years passed before Ellen, having meanwhile added Australia and South America to the list of her triumphs, returned to the Paris which she had not seen since the day she left with Rebecca for the Vienna they had never reached and now never would reach; because, as Rebecca said, the old Vienna was gone now, forever. Ellen would never know it as it had been in the days when Rebecca had visited Uncle Otto who owned a sapphire mine in Cambodia.
In the end she went back to Paris over the protests of her mother and against the advice of Rebecca, who saw the return simply as a great bundle of money thrown to the winds. But she could not have done otherwise. She had to return. She was unable to explain the instinct, but she trusted it shrewdly as wise persons trust instinct for its value as accumulated experience over any mere process of logic. She had to see Lily again and the beautiful house (so saddened and changed) in the Rue Raynouard. And there were times too when she became obsessed by an inexplicable fear that if she did not go at once, she might be too late. . . . Too late for what? This she could not answer, save that vaguely it must have to do with Fergus and Callendar. Lily was in no danger; she lived quietly in the Rue Raynouard or in the white villa at Nice.
For two years she had allowed herself to be ruled by circumstance and by Rebecca Schönberg, the high priestess of opportunity. She would wait no longer now. And so, after a terrible scene with Rebecca in which they both descended to the level of fishwives, she had embarked to return to a city which could mean nothing now so far as her success was concerned, a barren city that lay dark and blue with the coming of nightfall.
The old fear possessed her now for days at a time. Life was rushing past her on and on. . . . She might be too late.