But when Rita met him at night, drugs, massage and alcohol had had their influence and kept him still upon the brink.
In his well-cut evening clothes, with his face a little fatter, a little redder perhaps, he was still her clever, debonnair Gilbert.
"Let us have a quiet hour, Let us hob-and-nob with Death."
Three weeks passed. There was no change in the relations of Rita Wallace and Gilbert Lothian.
She was gay, tender, silent by turns, and her thirst for pleasure seemed unquenchable. She yielded nothing. Things were as they were. He was married: there was no more to be said, they must "dree their wierd"--endure their lot.
Often the man smiled bitterly to hear her girlish wisdom, uttered with almost complacent finality. It was not very difficult for _her_ to endure. She had no conception of the dreadful state into which he had come, the torture he suffered.
When he was alone--during the long evil day when he could not see her--the perspiration his heated blood sent out upon his face and body seemed like the very night dews of the grave. He was the sensualist of whom Ruskin speaks, the sensualist with the shroud about his feet. All day long he fought for sufficient mastery over himself to go through the evening, fought against the feverish disease of parched throat and wandering eyes; senseless, dissolute, merciless.
And one dreadful flame burned steadily in the surrounding gloom--
"_Love, which is lust, is the lamp in the tomb. Love, which is lust, is the call from the gloom._"
"Je me nourris de flammes" was the proud motto of an ancient ducal house in Burgundy. With grimmer meaning Lothian might have taken it for his own during these days.
He had heard from his wife that she was coming home almost at once. Lady Davidson had rallied. There was every prospect of her living for a month or two more. Sir Harold Davidson was on his way home from India. He would go to her at once and it was now as certain as such things can be that he would be in time.
Mary wrote with deep sadness. To bid her beloved sister farewell on this earth was heart-rending. "And yet, darling,"--so the letter had run--"how marvellous it is to know, not to just hope, but to _know_ that I shall meet Dorothy again and that we shall see Jesus. When I think of that, tears of happiness mingle with the tears of sorrow. Sweet little Dorothy will be waiting for us when we too go, my dearest, dearest husband. God keep you, beloved. Day and night I pray for my dear one."