The Long Way by Mary Imlay Taylor

The big house was brilliantly lighted for the expected dinner guests when Astry and Belhaven came in out of the driving storm, and the sybaritic atmosphere, the vista of spacious rooms, the mocking cries of the parrots in the conservatory, all gave Belhaven the same strange feeling of unreality that had once so strongly affected Rachel. As he followed Astry into the library, it crossed his mind that external things would look much like this to him if he ever came back after death, as a disembodied spirit. He seemed to have no immediate concern with this artificial life except a feeling of being outside of it.

But, however vague and unreal might seem the _mise-en-scène_, he was vividly aware of the untenable position in which his fate had involved him. Astry had made that absolutely plain; only a few words had been said but those had keenly revealed the situation. The humiliation which had pursued him ever since he had permitted Rachel to intervene to save her sister, now became unbearable; there was no fate so miserable that he would not have preferred it to the shame and despair that he felt as he realized the futility of any effort of his to overcome Astry's contempt. In veiled and courteous phrase he had been allowed to perceive that he was esteemed a coward, and to his maddened senses one of the parrots in the conservatory seemed to echo the insulting cry.