One of Our Conquerors - World eBook Library

One of Our Conquerors
of her friends belonged to that hostile world. Only Victor,
no other, stood with her against the world. Her child, yes;
the love of her child she had; but the child’s destiny was an
alien phantom, looking at her with harder eyes than she had
vision of in her family. She did not say she was blameless,
did not affect the thought. She would have wished to say, for
small encouragement she would have said, that her case could
be pleaded.
Colney’s features were not inviting, though the expression
was not repellent. She sighed deeply; and to count on something
helpful by mentioning it, reverted to the ‘prospect’
which there appeared to be. ‘Victor speaks of the certainty
of his release.’
His release! Her language pricked a satirist’s gallbladder.
Colney refrained from speaking to wound, and enjoyed a
silence that did it.
‘Do you see any possibility?—you knew her,’ she said coldly.
‘Counting the number of times he has been expecting the
release, he is bound to believe it near at hand.’
‘You don’t?’ she asked: her bosom was up in a crisis of expectation
for the answer: and on a pause of half-a-minute,
she could have uttered the answer herself.
He perceived the insane eagerness through her mask, and
despised it, pitying the woman. ‘And you don’t,’ he said. ‘You
catch at delusions, to excuse the steps you consent to take.
Or you want me to wear the blinkers, the better to hoodwink
your own eyes. You see it as well as I: If you enter that
house, you have to go through the same as at Creckholt:—
and he’ll be the first to take fright.’
‘He finds you in tears: he is immensely devoted; he flings
up all to protect “his Nataly.”’
‘No: you are unjust to him. He would fling up all:’—
‘But his Nataly prefers to be dragged through fire? As you
please!’
She bowed to her chastisement. One motive in her consultation
with him came of the knowledge of his capacity to
inflict it and his honesty in the act, and a thirst she had to
hear the truth loud-tongued from him; together with a feeling
that he was excessive and satiric, not to be read by the
letter of his words: and in consequence, she could bear the
lash from him, and tell her soul that he overdid it, and have
an unjustly-treated self to cherish.—But in very truth she
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