As she crossed the room, however, her eye had been caught by an opened note from Mrs.Cressler, received the day before, and apprising her of the date of the funeral.At the sight, all the tragedy leaped up again in her mind and recollection, and in fancy she stood again in the back parlour of the Cressler home; her fingers pressed over her mouth to shut back the cries, horror and the terror of sudden death rending her heart, shaking the brain itself.Again and again since that dreadful moment had the fear come back, mingled with grief, with compassion, and the bitter sorrow of a kind friend gone forever from her side.And then, her resolution girding itself, her will power at fullest stretch, she had put the tragedy from her.Other and--for her--more momentous events impended.Everything in life, even death itself, must stand aside while her love was put to the test.Life and death were little things.Love only existed; let her husband's career fail; what did it import so only love stood the strain and issued from the struggle triumphant? And now, as she lay upon her couch, she crushed down all compunction for the pitiful calamity whose last scene she had discovered, her thoughts once more upon her husband and herself.Had the shock of that spectacle in the Cresslers' house, and the wearing suspense in which she had lived of late, so torn and disordered the delicate feminine nerves that a kind of hysteria animated and directed her impulses, her words, and actions? Laura did not know.She only knew that the day was going and that her husband neither came near her nor sent her word.
Even if he had been very busy, this was her birthday,--though he had lost millions! Could he not have sent even the foolishest little present to her, even a line--three words on a scrap of paper? But she checked herself.The day was not over yet; perhaps, perhaps he would remember her, after all, before the afternoon was over.He was managing a little surprise for her, no doubt.He knew what day this was.After their talk that Sunday in his smoking-room he would not forget.
And, besides, it was the evening that he had promised should be hers."If he loved her," she had said, he would give that evening to her.Never, never would Curtis fail her when conjured by that spell.
Laura had planned a little dinner for that night.It was to be served at eight.Page would have dined earlier; only herself and her husband were to be present.It was to be her birthday dinner.All the noisy, clamourous world should be excluded; no faintest rumble of the Pit would intrude.She would have him all to herself.He would, so she determined, forget everything else in his love for her.She would be beautiful as never before--brilliant, resistless, and dazzling.She would have him at her feet, her own, her own again, as much her own as her very hands.And before she would let him go he would forever and forever have abjured the Battle of the Street that had so often caught him from her.The Pit should not have him; the sweep of that great whirlpool should never again prevail against the power of love.
Yes, she had suffered, she had known the humiliation of a woman neglected.But it was to end now; her pride would never again be lowered, her love never again be ignored.
But the afternoon passed and evening drew on without any word from him.In spite of her anxiety, she yet murmured over and over again as she paced the floor of her room, listening for the ringing of the door bell:
"He will send word, he will send word.I know he will."By four o'clock she had begun to dress.Never had she made a toilet more superb, more careful.She disdained a "costume on this great evening.It was not to be "Theodora" now, nor "Juliet," nor "Carmen." It was to be only Laura Jadwin--just herself, unaided by theatricals, unadorned by tinsel.But it seemed consistent none the less to choose her most beautiful gown for the occasion, to panoply herself in every charm that was her own.Her dress, that closely sheathed the low, flat curves of her body and that left her slender arms and neck bare, was one shimmer of black scales, iridescent, undulating with light to her every movement.In the coils and masses of her black hair she fixed her two great _cabochons_ of pearls, and clasped about her neck her palm-broad collaret of pearls and diamonds.Against one shoulder nodded a bunch of Jacqueminots, royal red, imperial.
It was hard upon six o'clock when at last she dismissed her maid.Left alone, she stood for a moment in front of her long mirror that reflected her image from head to foot, and at the sight she could not forbear a smile and a sudden proud lifting of her head.All the woman in her preened and plumed herself in the consciousness of the power of her beauty.Let the Battle of the Street clamour never so loudly now, let the suction of the Pit be never so strong, Eve triumphed._Venus toute entiere s'attachait a sa proie._These women of America, these others who allowed business to draw their husbands from them more and more, who submitted to those cruel conditions that forced them to be content with the wreckage left after the storm and stress of the day's work--the jaded mind, the exhausted body, the faculties dulled by overwork--she was sorry for them.They, less radiant than herself, less potent to charm, could not call their husbands back.But she, Laura, was beautiful; she knew it; she gloried in her beauty.It was her strength.
She felt the same pride in it as the warrior in a finely tempered weapon.
And to-night her beauty was brighter than ever.It was a veritable aureole that crowned her.She knew herself to be invincible.So only that he saw her thus, she knew that she would conquer.And he would come."If he loved her," she had said.By his love for her he had promised; by his love she knew she would prevail.
