Any effort Feather had made in that direction would only have
detracted from the nakedness of its stark facts. They were quite
enough in themselves in their normal inevitableness. Feather in
her pale and totally undignified panic presented the whole thing
with clearness which had--without being aided by her--an actual
dramatic value. This in spite of her mental dartings to and from
and dragging in of points and bits of scenes which were not connected
with each other. Only a brain whose processes of inclusion and
exclusion were final and rapid could have followed her. Coombe
watched her closely as she talked. No grief-stricken young widowed
loneliness and heart-break were the background of her anguish. She
was her own background and also her own foreground. The strength
of the fine body laid prone on the bed of the room she held in horror,
the white rigid face whose good looks had changed to something she
could not bear to remember, had no pathos which was not concerned
with the fact that Robert had amazingly and unnaturally failed
her by dying and leaving her nothing but unpaid bills. This truth
indeed made the situation more poignantly and finally squalid,
as she brought forth one detail after another. There were bills
which had been accumulating ever since they began their life in
the narrow house, there had been trades-people who had been juggled
with, promises made and supported by adroit tricks and cleverly
invented misrepresentations and lies which neither of the pair had
felt any compunctions about and had indeed laughed over.
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