Page:The Yellow Book - 05.djvu/74

came a sudden, sharp crack, a tiny smoke film. She stood an instant swaying slightly, smiling certainly, distinctly outlined against the background of rain-washed window, of grey falling rain, the top of her head cutting in two the Ritterhausen escutcheon. Then all at once there was nothing at all between him and the window; he saw the coat-of-arms entire; but a motionless, inert heap of plush and lace, and fallen wine-red hair, lay at his feet upon the floor.

"Child, child, what have you done?" he cried with anguish, and kneeling beside her, lifted her up, and looked into her face.

*****

When from a distance of time and place Campbell was at last able to look back with some degree of calmness on the catastrophe, the element which stung him most keenly was this: he could never convince himself that Lulie had really loved him after all. And the only two persons who had known them both, and the circumstances of the case, sufficiently well to have resolved his doubts one way or the other, held diametrically opposite views.

"Well, just listen, then, and I'll tell you how it was," Miss Nannie Dodge had said to him impressively, the day before he left Schloss-Altenau for ever, "Lulie was tremendously, terribly in love with you. And when she found that you wouldn't care about her, she didn't want to live any more. As to the way in which it happened, you don't need to reproach yourself for that. She'd have done it, anyhow: if not then, why, later. But it's all the rest of your conduct to her that was so cruel. Your cold, complacent British unresponsiveness. I guess you'll never find another woman to love you as Lulie did. She was just the darlingest, the sweetest, the most loving girl in the world."

Mayne,