But her own
rooms at the hotel had been beautiful and luxurious. They had
sheltered and pampered her body for five years, and her father's
house was a stately mansion, refurnished, with the exception of old
colonial pieces, after the grand tour in Europe. This room, although
clean and sufficiently equipped, was sordid and commonplace, and the
bed was as hard as the horsehair furniture. Her body as well as her
aesthetic sense had rebelled more than once.
But she would never return; although she guessed that the complete
dissociation from her old life and its tragic reminders had more than
a little to do with the loathing for drink that had gradually
possessed her. She had not admitted it to Holt, but it required a
supreme effort of will to take a glass of hot whiskey and water at
night, the taste disguised as much as possible by lime juice, and
another in the daytime. She had no desire to reform! And she longed
passionately to drown not only her heart but her pride. Now that her
system was refusing its demoralizing drug she felt that horror of her
descent only possible to a woman who has inherited and practised all
the refinements of civilization. She longed to return to those first
months of degraded oblivion, and could not!
The champagne or brandy she was forced to order in the dives she
haunted, in order to secure a table, merely gave her tone for the
moment.
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