she was fearfully beset, almost lifeless; and being abandoned, her blank
night of imagination felt that there was nothing left for her save to
fall upon those nearest.

She gave her submission to her mother. In her mind, during the last
wrestling with a weakness that was alternately her love, and her
cowardice, the interpretation of the act ran: 'He may come, and I am his
if he comes: and if not, I am bound to my people.' He had taught her to
rely on him blindly, and thus she did it inanimately while cutting
herself loose from him. In a similar mood, the spiritual waverer vows to
believe if the saint will appear. However, she submitted. Then there
was joy in the family, and she tasted their caresses.




CHAPTER IX

After his deed of loftiness Alvan walked to his hotel, where the sight of
the room Clotilde had entered that morning caught his breath. He
proceeded to write his first letter to General von Rudiger, repressing
his heart's intimations that he had stepped out of the friendly path, and
was on a strange and tangled one. The sense of power in him was leonine
enough to promise the forcing of a way whithersoever the path: yet did
that ghost of her figure across the room haunt him with searching eyes.
They set him spying over himself at an actor who had not needed to be
acting his part, brilliant though it was. He crammed his energy into his
idea of the part, to carry it forward victoriously. Before the world,
it would without question redound to his credit, and he heard the world
acclaiming him: