The Lamp of Fate | Page 8

and Hugh, obsessed by his newly
conceived idea of atoning for the sin of his marriage, was utterly
oblivious of the enormity of his conduct as viewed through unbiased
eyes.
The woman who had just fought her way through the Valley of the
Shadow stared at him uncomprehendingly.
"Retribution?" she repeated blankly.
"For my marriage--our marriage."
Diane's breath came faster.

"What--what do you mean?" she asked falteringly. Suddenly a look of
sheer terror leaped into her eyes, and she clutched at Hugh's sleeve.
"Oh, you're not going to be like Catherine? Say you're not! Hugh,
you've always said she was crazy to call our marriage a sin. . . . /A
sin!/" She tried to laugh, but the laugh stuck in her throat, caught and
pinned there by the terror that gripped her.
"Yes, I've said that. I've said it because I wanted to think it," he
returned remorselessly, "not because I really thought it."
Diane dragged herself up on to her elbow.
"I don't understand. You've not changed?" Then, as he made no answer:
"Hugh, you're frightening me! What do you mean? What has Catherine
been saying to you?"
Her voice rose excitedly. A patch of feverish colour appeared on either
cheek. Old Virginie sprung up from her chair by the fire, alarmed.
"You excite madame!"
Hugh turned to leave the room.
"We'll discuss this another time, Diane," he said.
Diane moved her head fretfully.
"No. Now--now! Don't go! Hugh!"
Her voice rose almost to a scream and simultaneously the nurse came
hurrying in from the adjoining room. She threw one glance at the
patient, huddled flushed and excited against the pillows, then without
more ado she marched up to Hugh and, taking him by the shoulders
with her small, capable hands, she pushed him out of the room.
"Do you want to /kill/ your wife?" she demanded in a low voice of
concentrated anger. "If so, you're going the right way about it."
The next moment the door closed behind her, and Hugh found himself

standing alone on the landing outside it.

Although the scene with her husband did not kill Diane, it went very
near it. For some time she was dangerously ill, but at last the combined
efforts of doctor and nurse restored her once more to a frail hold upon
life, and the resiliency of youth accomplished the rest.
Curiously enough, the remembrance of Hugh's brief visit to her bedside
held for her no force of reality. When the fever which had ensued
abated, she described the whole scene in detail to Virginie and the
nurse as an evil dream which she had had--and pitifully they let her
continue in this belief.
Even Hugh himself had been compelled, under protest, to take part in
this deception. The doctor, a personal friend of his, had not minced
matters.
"You've acted the part of an unmitigated coward, Vallincourt--salving
your own fool conscience at your wife's expense. Even if you no longer
love her--"
"But I do love her," protested Hugh. "I--I /worship/ her!"
Jim Lancaster stared. In common with most medical men he was more
or less used to the odd vagaries of human nature, but Hugh's attitude
struck him as altogether incomprehensible.
"Then what in the name of thunder have you been getting at?" he
demanded.
"I both love and hate her," declared Hugh wretchedly.
"That's rot," retorted the other. "It's impossible."
"It's not impossible."
Hugh rose and began pacing backwards and forwards. Lancaster's eyes

rested on him thoughtfully. The man had altered during the last few
weeks--altered incredibly. He was a stone lighter to start with, and his
blond, clear-cut face had the worn look born of mental conflict. His
eyes were red-rimmed as though from insufficient sleep.
"It's not impossible." Hugh paused in his restless pacing to and fro. "I
love her because I can't help myself. I hate her because I ought never to
have married her--never made a woman of her type the mother of my
child."
"All mothers are sacred," suggested the doctor quietly.
Hugh seemed not to hear him.
"How long is this pretence to go on, Lancaster?" he demanded irritably.
"What pretence?"
"This pretence that nothing is changed--nothing altered--between my
wife and myself?"
"For ever, I hope. So that, after all, there will have been no pretence."
But the appeal of the speech was ineffectual. Hugh looked at the other
man unmoved.
"It's no use hoping that you and I can see things from the same
standpoint," he added stubbornly. "I've made my decision--laid down
the lines of our future life together. I'm only waiting till you, as a
medical man, tell me that Diane's health is sufficiently restored for me
to inform her."
"No woman is ever in such health that you can break her heart with
impunity."
Hugh's light-grey