{"product_id":"2940013378858","title":"THE INNER SHRINE","description":"_THE INNER SHRINE_\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eI\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThough she had counted the strokes of every hour since midnight, Mrs.\u003cbr\u003eEveleth had no thought of going to bed. When she was not sitting bolt\u003cbr\u003eupright, indifferent to comfort, in one of the stiff-backed, gilded\u003cbr\u003echairs, she was limping, with the aid of her cane, up and down the long\u003cbr\u003esuite of salons, listening for the sound of wheels. She knew that George\u003cbr\u003eand Diane would be surprised to find her waiting up for them, and that\u003cbr\u003ethey might even be annoyed; but in her state of dread it was impossible\u003cbr\u003eto yield to small considerations.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eShe could hardly tell how this presentiment of disaster had taken hold\u003cbr\u003eupon her, for the beginning of it must have come as imperceptibly as the\u003cbr\u003efirst flicker of dusk across the radiance of an afternoon. Looking back,\u003cbr\u003eshe could almost make herself believe that she had seen its shadow over\u003cbr\u003eher early satisfaction in her son's marriage to Diane. Certainly she had\u003cbr\u003efelt it there before their honeymoon was over. The four years that had\u003cbr\u003epassed since then had been spent--or, at least, she would have said so\u003cbr\u003enow--in waiting for the peril to present itself.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eAnd yet, had she been called on to explain why she saw it stalking\u003cbr\u003ethrough the darkness of this particular June night, she would have found\u003cbr\u003eit difficult to give coherent statement to her fear. Everything about\u003cbr\u003eher was pursuing its normally restless round, with scarcely a hint of\u003cbr\u003ethe exceptional. If life in Paris was working up again to that feverish\u003cbr\u003eclimax in which the season dies, it was only what she had witnessed\u003cbr\u003eevery year since the last days of the Second Empire. If Diane's gayety\u003cbr\u003ewas that of excitement rather than of youth, if George's depression was\u003cbr\u003ethat of jaded effort rather than of satiated pleasure, it was no more\u003cbr\u003ethan she had seen in them at other times. She acknowledged that she had\u003cbr\u003efew facts to go upon--that she had indeed little more than the terrified\u003cbr\u003eprescience which warns the animal of a storm.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThere were moments of her vigil when she tried to reassure herself with\u003cbr\u003ethe very tenuity of her reasons for alarm. It was a comfort to think how\u003cbr\u003elittle there was that she could state with the definiteness of\u003cbr\u003eknowledge. In all that met the eye George's relation to Diane was not\u003cbr\u003eless happy than in the first days of their life together. If, on Diane's\u003cbr\u003epart, the spontaneity of wedded love had gradually become the adroitness\u003cbr\u003eof domestic tact, there was nothing to affirm it but Mrs. Eveleth's own\u003cbr\u003epower of divination. If George submitted with a blinder obedience than\u003cbr\u003eever to each new extravagance of Diane's Parisian caprice, there was\u003cbr\u003enothing to show that he lived beyond his means but Mrs. Eveleth's\u003cbr\u003ematernal apprehension. His income was undoubtedly large, and, for all\u003cbr\u003eshe knew, it justified the sumptuous style Diane and he kept up. Where\u003cbr\u003ethe purchasing power of money began and ended was something she had\u003cbr\u003enever known. Disorder was so frequent in her own affairs that when\u003cbr\u003eGeorge grew up she had been glad to resign them to his keeping, taking\u003cbr\u003ewhat he told her was her income. As for Diane, her fortune was so small\u003cbr\u003eas to be a negligible quantity in such housekeeping as they maintained--a\u003cbr\u003epoverty of _dot_ which had been the chief reason why her noble kinsfolk\u003cbr\u003ehad consented to her marriage with an American. Looking round the\u003cbr\u003esplendid house, Mrs. Eveleth was aware that her husband could never\u003cbr\u003ehave lived in it, still less have built it; while she wondered more than\u003cbr\u003eever how George, who led the life of a Parisian man of fashion, could\u003cbr\u003ehave found the means of doing both.","brand":"SAP","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":47147521442032,"sku":"2940013378858","price":0.99,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0737\/7593\/9824\/files\/2940013378858_p0.jpg?v=1763580651","url":"https:\/\/shop-qa.barnesandnoble.com\/products\/2940013378858","provider":"Barnes \u0026 Noble (DEV)","version":"1.0","type":"link"}