Queer trance of an existence, which both were
afraid to break. No sign from her of wanting those excitements which
girls who have lived her life, even for a few months, are supposed to
need. She never asked him to take her anywhere; never, in word, deed,
look, seemed anything but almost rapturously content. And yet he knew,
and she knew, that they were only waiting to see whether Fate would
turn her thumb down on them. In these days he did not drink. Out of his
quarter's money, when it came in, he had paid his debts--their expenses
were very small. He never went to see Keith, never wrote to him, hardly
thought of him. And from those dread apparitions--Walenn lying with
the breath choked out of him, and the little grey, driven animal in the
dock--he hid, as only a man can who must hide or be destroyed. But daily
he bought a newspaper, and feverishly, furtively scanned its columns.
VIII
Coming out of the Law Courts on the afternoon of January 28th, at the
triumphant end of a desperately fought will case, Keith saw on a poster
the words: "Glove Lane Murder: Trial and Verdict"; and with a rush of
dismay he thought: 'Good God! I never looked at the paper this morning!'
The elation which had filled him a second before, the absorption he had
felt for two days now in the case so hardly won, seemed suddenly quite
sickeningly trivial.
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