She suddenly and rather awfully realized
that she did not know a single person whom it would not be frantic
to expect anything from.
Nobody had money enough for themselves, however rich they were.
The richer they were the more they needed. It was when this thought
came to her that she clutched her hands in her hair. The pretty
and smart women and agreeable more or less good looking men who
had chattered and laughed and made love in her drawing-rooms were
chattering, laughing and making love in other houses at this very
moment--or they were at the theatre applauding some fashionable
actor-manager. At this very moment--while she lay on the carpet in
the dark and every little room in the house had horror shut inside
its closed doors--particularly Robert's room which was so hideously
close to her own, and where there seemed still to lie moveless
on the bed, the stiff hard figure. It was when she recalled this
that the unnatural silence of the drawing-rooms was intruded upon
by the brief half-stifled hysteric shriek, and the moaning which
made its way through the ceiling. She felt almost as if the door
handle might turn and something stiff and cold try to come in.
So the hours went on behind the cream-coloured outer walls and
the white windows and gay flower-boxes. And the street became more
and more silent--so silent at last that when the policeman walked
past on his beat his heavy regular footfall seemed loud and almost
resounding.
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