To desert her longer would be too unjust, and derange entirely
the balance of this complicated story.
CHAPTER XVIII.
A CRUEL mental stroke, like a heavy blow upon the body, sometimes benumbs
and sickens at first, but does not torture; yet that is to follow.
It was so with Ina Klosking. The day she just missed Edward Severne, and
he seemed to melt away from her very grasp into the wide world again, she
could drag herself to the theater and sing angelically, with a dull and
aching heart. But next day her heart entered on sharper suffering. She
was irritated, exasperated; chained to the theater, to Homburg, yet wild
to follow Severne to England without delay. She told Ashmead she must and
would go. He opposed it stoutly, and gave good reasons. She could not
break faith with the management. England was a large place. They had, as
yet, no clew but a name. By waiting, the clew would come. The sure course
was to give publicity in England to her winnings, and so draw Severne to
her. But for once she was too excited to listen to reason. She was
tempest-tossed. "I will go--I will go," she repeated, as she walked the
room wildly, and flung her arms aloft with reckless abandon, and yet with
a terrible majesty, an instinctive grace, and all the poetry of a great
soul wronged and driven wild.
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