XXVI


Darrow waited alone in the sitting-room.

No place could have been more distasteful as the scene of
the talk that lay before him; but he had acceded to Anna's
suggestion that it would seem more natural for her to summon
Sophy Viner than for him to go in search of her. As his
troubled pacings carried him back and forth a relentless
hand seemed to be tearing away all the tender fibres of
association that bound him to the peaceful room. Here, in
this very place, he had drunk his deepest draughts of
happiness, had had his lips at the fountain-head of its
overflowing rivers; but now that source was poisoned and he
would taste no more of an untainted cup.

For a moment he felt an actual physical anguish; then his
nerves hardened for the coming struggle. He had no notion
of what awaited him; but after the first instinctive recoil
he had seen in a flash the urgent need of another word with
Sophy Viner. He had been insincere in letting Anna think
that he had consented to speak because she asked it. In
reality he had been feverishly casting about for the pretext
she had given him; and for some reason this trivial
hypocrisy weighed on him more than all his heavy burden of
deceit.

At length he heard a step behind him and Sophy Viner