And Yvonne, clad in dressing gown and bare-footed, with her hair about her shoulders, stood trembling outside his door and heard. Although his room was not immediately above hers, being over the sitting-room, yet in her sleeplessness she had listened for hours and hours to his movements. At last, obeying an incontrollable impulse, she had crept up the stairs. A long time she waited, her hand upon the door, his name upon her lips, shaking from head to foot with the revelation of the man’s agony. Every sound was like a stab in her tender flesh. The warm, impulsive old Yvonne within her would have burst at the first sob into his room, but the newer womanhood held her back. When all was silent she crept downstairs again into her bed, and lay there, throbbing and shivering until the morning.
And Joyce, unconscious that she had been so near to him, that had he but opened his door, he would have been caught in her arms and been given for all eternity that which he was renouncing, lay down in his bed exhausted, and when the morning was near at hand, sank into heavy sleep. He awoke later than usual. The water that Sarah had put for him was nearly cold. He drew up the blind and saw a cheerless grey morning--a fitting dawn for his new life. The minor details of the day before him presented themselves painfully. The first was the necessity of being well shaven, groomed and dressed. He drew from the drawer the clothes of decent life that he could now so seldom afford to wear. The last time he had put them on was three weeks ago, when he had taken Yvonne to a ballad concert at St. James’s Hall. He remembered how, in her bright way, she had said, on their way thither, “You look so handsome and distinguished, I feel quite proud.”
And now he was to wear them at her wedding with another man. And he was to give her away.
He had regained his nerve, felt equal to the task. After dressing with scrupulous care, he slowly went down to breakfast,--his last breakfast with Yvonne. He contemplated the fact with the fatalistic calmness with which men condemned to death often face their last meal on earth. Yvonne had not yet appeared. Sarah had not even brought up the breakfast. He sat down and waited, unfolded his halfpenny morning paper and tried to read. After a time he became aware that he was studying the advertisements. So he laid it aside.