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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Woman With The Fan, by Robert Hichens
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: The Woman With The Fan
+
+Author: Robert Hichens
+
+Release Date: July, 2005 [EBook #8549]
+Posting Date: July 24, 2009
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE WOMAN WITH THE FAN ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Dagny, and David Widger
+
+
+
+
+
+THE WOMAN WITH THE FAN
+
+By Robert Hichens
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+IN a large and cool drawing-room of London a few people were
+scattered about, listening to a soprano voice that was singing to the
+accompaniment of a piano. The sound of the voice came from an inner
+room, towards which most of these people were looking earnestly. Only
+one or two seemed indifferent to the fascination of the singer.
+
+A little woman, with oily black hair and enormous dark eyes, leaned back
+on a sofa, playing with a scarlet fan and glancing sideways at a thin,
+elderly man, who gazed into the distance from which the voice came. His
+mouth worked slightly under his stiff white moustache, and his eyes, in
+colour a faded blue, were fixed and stern. Upon his knees his thin and
+lemon-coloured hands twitched nervously, as if they longed to grasp
+something and hold it fast. The little dark woman glanced down at
+these hands, and then sharply up at the elderly man's face. A faint and
+malicious smile curved her full lips, which were artificially reddened,
+and she turned her shoulder to him with deliberation and looked about
+the room.
+
+On all the faces in it, except one, she perceived intent expressions.
+A sleek and plump man, with hanging cheeks, a hooked nose, and hair
+slightly tinged with grey and parted in the middle, was the exception.
+He sat in a low chair, pouting his lips, playing with his single
+eyeglass, and looking as sulky as an ill-conditioned school-boy. Once
+or twice he crossed and uncrossed his short legs with a sort of abrupt
+violence, laid his fat, white hands on the arms of the chair, lifted
+them, glanced at his rosy and shining nails, and frowned. Then he shut
+his little eyes so tightly that the skin round them became wrinkled,
+and, stretching out his feet, seemed almost angrily endeavouring to fall
+asleep.
+
+A tall young man, who was sitting alone not far off, cast a glance of
+contempt at him, and then, as if vexed at having bestowed upon him even
+this slight attention, leaned forward, listening with eagerness to the
+soprano voice. The little dark woman observed him carefully above the
+scarlet feathers of her fan, which she now held quite still. His face
+was lean and brown. His eyes were long and black, heavy-lidded, and
+shaded by big lashes which curled upward. His features were good. The
+nose and chin were short and decided, but the mouth was melancholy,
+almost weak. On his upper lip grew a short moustache, turned up at the
+ends. His body was slim and muscular.
+
+After watching him for a little while the dark woman looked again at the
+elderly man beside her, and then quickly back to the young fellow. She
+seemed to be comparing the two attentions, of age and of youth. Perhaps
+she found something horrible in the process for she suddenly lost her
+expression of sparkling and birdlike sarcasm, and bending her arm, as if
+overcome with lassitude, she let her fan drop on her knees, and stared
+moodily at the carpet.
+
+A very tall woman, with snow-white hair and a face in which nobility and
+weariness were mated, let fall two tears, and a huge man, with short,
+bronze-coloured hair and a protruding lower jaw, who was sitting
+opposite to her, noticed them and suddenly looked proud.
+
+The light soprano voice went on singing an Italian song about a summer
+night in Venice, about stars, dark waters and dark palaces, heat, and
+the sound of music, and of gondoliers calling over the lagoons to their
+comrades. It was an exquisite voice; not large, but flexible and very
+warm. The pianoforte accompaniment was rather uneasy and faltering. Now
+and then, when it became blurred and wavering, the voice was abruptly
+hard and decisive, once even piercing and almost shrewish. Then the
+pianist, as if attacked by fear, played louder and hurried the tempo,
+the little dark woman smiled mischievously, the white-haired woman put
+her handkerchief to her eyes, and the young man looked as if he wished
+to commit murder. But the huge man with the bronze hair went on looking
+equably proud.
+
+When the voice died away there was distinct, though slight, applause,
+which partially drowned the accompanist's muddled conclusion. Then a
+woman walked in from the second drawing-room with an angry expression on
+her face.
+
+She was tall and slight. Her hair and eyes were light yellow-brown, and
+the former had a natural wave in it. Her shoulders and bust were superb,
+and her small head was beautifully set on a lovely, rather long, neck.
+She had an oval face, with straight, delicate features, now slightly
+distorted by temper. But the most remarkable thing about her was her
+complexion. Her skin was exquisite, delicately smooth and white, warmly
+white like a white rose. She did nothing to add to its natural beauty,
+though nearly every woman in London declared that she had a special
+preparation and always slept in a mask coated thickly with it. The Bond
+Street oracles never received a visit from her. She had been born
+with an enchanting complexion, a marvellous skin. She was young, just
+twenty-four. She let herself alone because she knew improvement--in
+that direction--was not possible. The mask coated with Juliet paste,
+or Aphrodite ivorine, existed only in the radiant imaginations of her
+carefully-arranged acquaintances.
+
+In appearance she was a siren. By nature she was a siren too. But she
+had a temper and sometimes showed it. She showed it now.
+
+As she walked in slowly all the scattered people leaned forward,
+murmuring their thanks, and the men stood up and gathered round her.
+
+"Beautiful! Beautiful!" muttered the thin, elderly man in a hoarse
+voice, striking his fingers repeatedly against the palms of his withered
+hands.
+
+The young man looked at the singer and said nothing; but the anger in
+her face was reflected in his, and mingled with a flaming of sympathy
+that made his appearance almost startling. The white-haired woman
+clasped the singer's hands and said, "Thank you, dearest!" in a
+thrilling voice, and the little dark woman with the red fan cried out,
+"Viola, you simply pack up Venice, carry it over the Continent and set
+it down here in London!"
+
+Lady Holme frowned slightly.
+
+"Thank you, thank you, you good-natured dears," she said with an attempt
+at lightness. Then, hearing the thin rustle of a dress, she turned
+sharply and cast an unfriendly glance at a mild young woman with a very
+pointed nose, on which a pair of eyeglasses sat astride, who came meekly
+forward, looking self-conscious, and smiling with one side of her mouth.
+The man with the protruding jaw, who was Lord Holme, said to her, in a
+loud bass voice:
+
+"Thanks, Miss Filberte, thanks."
+
+"Oh, not at all, Lord Holme," replied the accompanist with a sudden
+air of rather foolish delight. "I consider it an honour to accompany an
+amateur who sings like Lady Holme."
+
+She laid a slight emphasis on the word "amateur."
+
+Lady Holme suddenly walked forward to an empty part of the drawing-room.
+The elderly man, whose name was Sir Donald Ulford, made a movement as
+if to follow her, then cleared his throat and stood still looking
+after her. Lord Holme stuck out his under jaw. But Lady Cardington, the
+white-haired woman spoke to him softly, and he leaned over to her and
+replied. The sleek man, whose name was Mr. Bry, began to talk about
+Tschaikowsky to Mrs. Henry Wolfstein, the woman with the red fan. He
+uttered his remarks authoritatively in a slow and languid voice, looking
+at the pointed toes of his shoes. Conversation became general.
+
+Robin Pierce, the tall young man, stood alone for a few minutes. Two or
+three times he glanced towards Lady Holme, who had sat down on a sofa,
+and was opening and shutting a small silver box which she had picked up
+from a table near her. Then he walked quietly up the room and sat down
+beside her.
+
+"Why on earth didn't you accompany yourself?" he asked in a low voice.
+"You knew what a muddler that girl was, I suppose."
+
+"Yes. She plays like a distracted black beetle--horrid creature!"
+
+"Then--why?"
+
+"I look ridiculous sitting at the piano."
+
+"Ridiculous--you--"
+
+"Well, I hold them far more when I stand up. They can't get away from me
+then."
+
+"And you'd rather have your singing ruined than part for a moment with a
+scrap of your physical influence, of the influence that comes from your
+beauty, not your talent--your face, not your soul. Viola, you're just
+the same."
+
+"Lady Holme," she said.
+
+"P'sh! Why?"
+
+"My little husband's fussy."
+
+"And much you care if he is."
+
+"Oh, yes, I do. He sprawls when he fusses and knocks things over, and
+then, when I've soothed him, he always goes and does Sandow exercises
+and gets bigger. And he's big enough as it is. I must keep him quiet."
+
+"But you can't keep the other men quiet. With your face and your
+voice--"
+
+"Oh, it isn't the voice," she said with contempt.
+
+He looked at her rather sadly.
+
+"Why will you put such an exaggerated value on your appearance? Why will
+you never allow that three-quarters at least of your attraction comes
+from something else?"
+
+"What?"
+
+"Your personality--your self."
+
+"My soul!" she said, suddenly putting on a farcically rapt and yearning
+expression and speaking in a hollow, hungry voice. "Are we in the
+prehistoric Eighties?"
+
+"We are in the unchanging world."
+
+"Unchanging! My dear boy!"
+
+"Yes, unchanging," he repeated obstinately.
+
+He pressed his lips together and looked away. Miss Filberte was cackling
+and smiling on a settee, with a man whose figure presented a succession
+of curves, and who kept on softly patting his hands together and swaying
+gently backwards and forwards.
+
+"Well, Mr. Pierce, what's the matter?"
+
+"Mr. Pierce!" he said, almost savagely.
+
+"Yes, of the English Embassy in Rome, rising young diplomat and full of
+early Eighty yearns--"
+
+"How the deuce can you be as you are and yet sing as you do?" he
+exclaimed, turning on her. "You say you care for nothing but the outside
+of things--the husk, the shell, the surface. You think men care for
+nothing else. Yet when you sing you--you--"
+
+"What do I do?"
+
+"It's as if another woman than you were singing in you--a woman totally
+unlike you, a woman who believes in, and loves, the real beauty which
+you care nothing about."
+
+"The real beauty that rules the world is lodged in the epidermis," she
+said, opening her fan and smiling slowly. "If this"--she touched her
+face--"were to be changed into--shall we say a Filberte countenance?"
+
+"Oh!" he exclaimed.
+
+"There! You see, directly I put the matter before you, you have to agree
+with me!"
+
+"No one could sing like you and have a face like a silly sheep."
+
+"Poor Miss Filberte! Well, then, suppose me disfigured and singing
+better than ever--what man would listen to me?"
+
+"I should."
+
+"For half a minute. Then you'd say, 'Poor wretch, she's lost her voice!'
+No, no, it's my face that sings to the world, my face the world loves to
+listen to, my face that makes me friends and--enemies."
+
+She looked into his eyes with impertinent directness.
+
+"It's my face that's made Mr. Robin Pierce deceive himself into the
+belief that he only worships women for their souls, their lovely
+natures, their--"
+
+"Do you know that in a way you are a singularly modest woman?" he
+suddenly interrupted.
+
+"Am I? How?"
+
+"In thinking that you hold people only by your appearance, that your
+personality has nothing to say in the matter."
+
+"I am modest, but not so modest as that."
+
+"Well, then?"
+
+"Personality is a crutch, a pretty good crutch; but so long as men are
+men they will put crutches second and--something else first. Yes, I know
+I'm a little bit vulgar, but everybody in London is."
+
+"I wish you lived in Rome."
+
+"I've seen people being vulgar there too. Besides, there may be reasons
+why it would not be good for me to live in Rome."
+
+She glanced at him again less impertinently, and suddenly her whole body
+looked softer and kinder.
+
+"You must put up with my face, Robin," she added. "It's no good wishing
+me to be ugly. It's no use. I can't be."
+
+She laughed. Her ill-humour had entirely vanished.
+
+"If you were--" he said. "If you were--!"
+
+"What then?"
+
+"Do you think no one would stick to you--stick to you for yourself?"
+
+"Oh, yes."
+
+"Who, then?"
+
+"Quite several old ladies. It's very strange, but old ladies of a
+certain class--the almost obsolete class that wears caps and connects
+piety with black brocade--like me. They think me 'a bright young thing.'
+And so I am."
+
+"I don't know what you are. Sometimes I seem to divine what you are, and
+then--then your face is like a cloud which obscures you--except when you
+are singing."
+
+She laughed frankly.
+
+"Poor Robin! It was always your great fault--trying to plumb shallows
+and to take high dives into water half a foot deep."
+
+He was silent for a minute. At last he said:
+
+"And your husband?"
+
+"Fritz!"
+
+His forehead contracted.
+
+"Fritz--yes. What does he do? Try to walk in ocean depths?"
+
+"You needn't sneer at Fritz," she said sharply.
+
+"I beg your pardon."
+
+"Fritz doesn't bother about shallows and depths. He loves me absurdly,
+and that's quite enough for him."
+
+"And for you."
+
+She nodded gravely.
+
+"And what would Fritz do if you were to lose your beauty? Would he be
+like all the other men? Would he cease to care?"
+
+For the first time Lady Holme looked really thoughtful--almost painfully
+thoughtful.
+
+"One's husband," she said slowly. "Perhaps he's different. He--he ought
+to be different."
+
+A faint suggestion of terror came into her large brown eyes.
+
+"There's a strong tie, you know, whatever people may say, a very strong
+tie in marriage," she murmured, as if she were thinking out something
+for herself. "Fritz ought to love me, even if--if--"
+
+She broke off and looked about the room. Robin Pierce glanced round too
+over the chattering guests sitting or standing in easy or lazy postures,
+smiling vaguely, or looking grave and indifferent. Mrs. Wolfstein was
+laughing, and yawned suddenly in the midst of her mirth. Lady Cardington
+said something apparently tragic, to Mr. Bry, who was polishing his
+eyeglass and pouting out his dewy lips. Sir Donald Ulford, wandering
+round the walls, was examining the pictures upon them. Lady Manby, a
+woman with a pyramid of brown hair and an aggressively flat back, was
+telling a story. Evidently it was a comic history of disaster. Her
+gestures were full of deliberate exaggeration, and she appeared to be
+impersonating by turns two or three different people, each of whom had
+a perfectly ridiculous personality. Lord Holme burst into a roar of
+laughter. His big bass voice vibrated through the room. Suddenly Lady
+Holme laughed too.
+
+"Why are you laughing?" Robin Pierce asked rather harshly. "You didn't
+hear what Lady Manby said."
+
+"No, but Fritz is so infectious. I believe there are laughter microbes.
+What a noise he makes! It's really a scandal."
+
+And she laughed again joyously.
+
+"You don't know much about women if you think any story of Lady Manby's
+is necessary, to prompt my mirth. Poor dear old Fritz is quite enough.
+There he goes again!"
+
+Robin Pierce began to look stiff with constraint, and just then Sir
+Donald Ulford, in his progress round the walls, reached the sofa where
+they were sitting.
+
+"You are very fortunate to possess this Cuyp, Lady Holme," he said in a
+voice from which all resonance had long ago departed.
+
+"Alas, Sir Donald, cows distress me! They call up sad memories. I was
+chased by one in the park at Grantoun when I was a child. A fly had
+stung it, so it tried to kill me. This struck me as unreason run riot,
+and ever since then I have wished the Spaniards would go a step farther
+and make cow-fights the national pastime. I hate cows frankly."
+
+Sir Donald sat down in an armchair and looked, with his faded blue eyes,
+into the eyes of his hostess. His drawn yellow face was melancholy, like
+the face of one who had long been an invalid. People who knew him
+well, however, said there was nothing the matter with him, and that his
+appearance had not altered during the last twenty years.
+
+"You can hate nothing beautiful," he said with a sort of hollow
+assurance.
+
+"I think cows hideous."
+
+"Cuyp's?"
+
+"All cows. You've never had one running after you."
+
+She took up her gloves, which she had laid down on the table beside her,
+and began to pull them gently through her fingers. Both Sir Donald and
+Robin looked at her hands, which were not only beautiful in shape but
+extraordinarily intelligent in their movements. Whatever they did they
+did well, without hesitation or bungling. Nobody had ever seen them
+tremble.
+
+"Do you consider that anything that can be dangerous for a moment must
+be hideous for ever?" asked Sir Donald, after a slight pause.
+
+"I'm sure I don't know. But I truly think cows hideous--I truly do."
+
+"Don't put on your gloves," exclaimed Robin at this moment.
+
+Sir Donald glanced at him and said:
+
+"Thank you."
+
+"Why not?" said Lady Holme.
+
+It was obvious to both men that there was no need to answer her
+question. She laid the gloves in her lap, smoothed them with her small
+fingers, and kept silence. Silence was characteristic of her. When she
+was in society she sometimes sat quite calmly and composedly without
+uttering a word. After watching her for a minute or two, Sir Donald
+said:
+
+"You must know Venice very well and understand it completely."
+
+"Oh, I've been there, of course."
+
+"Recently?"
+
+"Not so very long ago. After my marriage Fritz took me all over Europe."
+
+"And you loved Venice."
+
+Sir Donald did not ask a question, he made a statement.
+
+"No. It didn't agree with me. It depressed me. We were there in the
+mosquito season."
+
+"What has that to do with it?"
+
+"My dear Sir Donald, if you'd ever had a hole in your net you'd know.
+I made Fritz take me away after two days, and I've never been back. I
+don't want to have my one beauty ruined."
+
+Sir Donald did not pay the reasonable compliment. He only stretched out
+his lean hands over his knees, and said:
+
+"Venice is the only ideal city in Europe."
+
+"You forget Paris."
+
+"Paris!" said Sir Donald. "Paris is a suburb of London and New York.
+Paris is no longer the city of light, but the city of pornography and
+dressmakers."
+
+"Well, I don't know exactly what pornography is--unless it's some new
+process for taking snapshots. But I do know what gowns are, and I love
+Paris. The Venice shops are failures and the Venice mosquitoes are
+successes, and I hate Venice."
+
+An expression of lemon-coloured amazement appeared upon Sir Donald's
+face, and he glanced at Robin Pierce as if requesting the answer to
+a riddle. Robin looked rather as if he were enjoying himself, but the
+puzzled melancholy grew deeper on Sir Donald's face. With the air of a
+man determined to reassure his mind upon some matter, however, he spoke
+again.
+
+"You visited the European capitals?" he said.
+
+"Yes, all of them."
+
+"Constantinople?"
+
+"Terrible place! Dogs, dogs, nothing but dogs."
+
+"Did you like Petersburg?"
+
+"No, I couldn't bear it. I caught cold there."
+
+"And that was why you hated it?"
+
+"Yes. I went out one night with Fritz on the Neva to hear a woman in
+a boat singing--a peasant girl with high cheek-bones--and I caught a
+frightful chill."
+
+"Ah!" said Sir Donald. "What was the song? I know a good many of the
+Northern peasant songs."
+
+Suddenly Lady Holme got up, letting her gloves fall to the ground.
+
+"I'll sing it to you," she said.
+
+Robin Pierce touched her arm.
+
+"For Heaven's sake not to Miss Filberte's accompaniment!"
+
+"Very well. But come and sit where you can see me."
+
+"I won't," he said with brusque obstinacy.
+
+"Madman!" she answered. "Anyhow, you come, Sir Donald."
+
+And she walked lightly away towards the piano, followed by Sir Donald,
+who walked lightly too, but uncertainly, on his thin, stick-like legs.
+
+"What are you up to, Vi?" said Lord Holme, as she came near to him.
+
+"I'm going to sing something for Sir Donald."
+
+"Capital! Where's Miss Filberte?"
+
+"Here I am!" piped a thin alto voice.
+
+There was a rustle of skirts as the accompanist rose hastily from her
+chair.
+
+"Sit down, please, Miss Filberte," said Lady Holme in a voice of ice.
+
+Miss Filberte sat down like one who has been knocked on the head with a
+hammer, and Lady Holme went alone to the piano, turned the button that
+raised the music-stool, sat down too, holding herself very upright,
+and played some notes. For a moment, while she played, her face was
+so determined and pitiless that Mr. Bry, unaware that she was still
+thinking about Miss Filberte, murmured to Lady Cardington:
+
+"Evidently we are in for a song about Jael with the butter in the lordly
+dish omitted."
+
+Then an expression of sorrowful youth stole into Lady Holme's eyes,
+changed her mouth to softness and her cheeks to curving innocence.
+She leaned a little way from the piano towards her audience and sang,
+looking up into vacancy as if her world were hidden there. The song had
+the clear melancholy and the passion of a Northern night. It brought
+the stars out within that room and set purple distances before the
+eyes. Water swayed in it, but languidly, as water sways at night in calm
+weather, when the black spars of ships at anchor in sheltered harbours
+are motionless as fingers of skeletons pointing towards the moon.
+Mysterious lights lay round a silent shore. And in the wide air, on the
+wide waters, one woman was singing to herself of a sorrow that was deep
+as the grave, and that no one upon the earth knew of save she who sang.
+The song was very short. It had only two little verses. When it was
+over, Sir Donald, who had been watching the singer, returned to the
+sofa, where Robin Pierce was sitting with his eyes shut and, again
+striking his fingers against the palms of his hands, said: "I have heard
+that song at night on the Neva, and yet I never heard it before."
+
+People began getting up to go away. It was past eleven o'clock. Sir
+Donald and Robin Pierce stood together, saying good-bye to Lady Holme.
+As she held out her hand to the former, she said:
+
+"Oh, Sir Donald, you know Russia, don't you?"
+
+"I do."
+
+"Then I want you to tell me the name of that stuff they carry down
+the Neva in boats--the stuff that has such a horrible smell. That song
+always reminds me of it, and Fritz can't remember the name."
+
+"Nor can I," said Sir Donald, rather abruptly. "Good-night, Lady Holme."
+
+He walked out of the room, followed by Robin.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+LORD HOLME'S house was in Cadogan Square. When Sir Donald had put on his
+coat in the hall he turned to Robin Pierce and said:
+
+"Which way do you go?"
+
+"To Half Moon Street," said Robin.
+
+"We might walk, if you like. I am going the same way.
+
+"Certainly."
+
+They set out slowly. It was early in the year. Showers of rain had
+fallen during the day. The night was warm, and the damp earth in
+the Square garden steamed as if it were oppressed and were breathing
+wearily. The sky was dark and cloudy, and the air was impregnated with a
+scent to which many things had contributed, each yielding a fragment of
+the odour peculiar to it. Rain, smoke, various trees and plants, the wet
+paint on a railing, the damp straw laid before the house of an invalid,
+the hothouse flowers carried by a woman in a passing carriage--these and
+other things were represented in the heavy atmosphere which was full of
+the sensation of life. Sir Donald expanded his nostrils.
+
+"London, London!" he said. "I should know it if I were blind."
+
+"Yes. The London smell is not to be confused with the smell of any other
+place. You have been back a good while, I believe?"
+
+"Three years. I am laid on the London shelf now."
+
+"You have had a long life of work--interesting work."
+
+"Yes. Diplomacy has interesting moments. I have seen many countries. I
+have been transferred from Copenhagen to Teheran, visited the Sultan of
+Morocco at Fez, and--" he stopped. After a pause he added: "And now I
+sit in London clubs and look out of bay windows."
+
+They walked on slowly.
+
+"Have you known our hostess of to-night long?" Sir Donald asked
+presently.
+
+"A good while--quite a good while. But I'm very much away at Rome now.
+Since I have been there she has married."
+
+"I have only met her to speak to once before to-night, though I have
+seen her about very often and heard her sing."
+
+"Ah!"
+
+"To me she is an enigma," Sir Donald continued with some hesitation. "I
+cannot make her out at all."
+
+Robin Pierce smiled in the dark and thrust his hands deep down in the
+pockets of his overcoat.
+
+"I don't know," Sir Donald resumed, after a slight pause, "I don't know
+what is your--whether you care much for beauty in its innumerable forms.
+Many young men don't, I believe."
+
+"I do," said Robin. "My mother is an Italian, you know, and not an
+Italian Philistine."
+
+"Then you can help me, perhaps. Does Lady Holme care for beauty? But she
+must. It is impossible that she does not."
+
+"Do you think so? Why?"
+
+"I really cannot reconcile myself to the idea that such performances as
+hers are matters of chance."
+
+"They are not. Lady Holme is not a woman who chances things before the
+cruel world in which she, you and I live, Sir Donald."
+
+"Exactly. I felt sure of that. Then we come to calculation of effects,
+to consideration of that very interesting question--self-consciousness
+in art."
+
+"Do you feel that Lady Holme is self-conscious when she is singing?"
+
+"No. And that is just the point. She must, I suppose, have studied
+till she has reached that last stage of accomplishment in which the
+self-consciousness present is so perfectly concealed that it seems to be
+eliminated."
+
+"Exactly. She has an absolute command over her means."
+
+"One cannot deny it. No musician could contest it. But the question that
+interests me lies behind all this. There is more than accomplishment in
+her performance. There is temperament, there is mind, there is emotion
+and complete understanding. I am scarcely speaking strongly enough in
+saying complete--perhaps infinitely subtle would be nearer the mark.
+What do you say?"
+
+"I don't think if you said that there appears to be an infinitely subtle
+understanding at work in Lady Holme's singing you would be going at all
+too far."
+
+"Appears to be?"
+
+Sir Donald stopped for a moment on the pavement under a gas-lamp. As the
+light fell on him he looked like a weary old ghost longing to fade away
+into the dark shadows of the London night.
+
+"You say 'appears to be,'" he repeated.
+
+"Yes."
+
+"May I ask why?"
+
+"Well, would you undertake to vouch for Lady Holme's understanding--I
+mean for the infinite subtlety of it?"
+
+Sir Donald began to walk on once more.
+
+"I cannot find it in her conversation," he said.
+
+"Nor can I, nor can anyone."
+
+"She is full of personal fascination, of course."
+
+"You mean because of her personal beauty?"
+
+"No, it's more than that, I think. It's the woman herself. She is
+suggestive somehow. She makes one's imagination work. Of course she is
+beautiful."
+
+"And she thinks that is everything. She would part with her voice, her
+intelligence--she is very intelligent in the quick, frivolous fashion
+that is necessary for London--that personal fascination you speak of,
+everything rather than her white-rose complexion and the wave in her
+hair."
+
+"Really, really?"
+
+"Yes. She thinks the outside everything. She believes the world is
+governed, love is won and held, happiness is gained and kept by the husk
+of things. She told me only to-night that it is her face which sings
+to us all, not her voice; that were she to sing as well and be an ugly
+woman we should not care to listen to her."
+
+"H'm! H'm!"
+
+"Absurd, isn't it?"
+
+"What will be the approach of old age to her?"
+
+There was a suspicion of bitterness in his voice.
+
+"The coming of the King of Terrors," said Pierce. "But she cannot hear
+his footsteps yet."
+
+"They are loud enough in some ears. Ah, we, are at your door already?"
+
+"Will you be good-natured and come in for a little while?"
+
+"I'm afraid--isn't it rather late?"
+
+"Only half-past eleven."
+
+"Well, thank you."
+
+They stepped into the little hall. As they did so a valet appeared at
+the head of the stairs leading to the servants' quarters.
+
+"If you please, sir," he said to Pierce, "this note has just come. I was
+to ask if you would read it directly you returned."
+
+"Will you excuse me?" said Pierce to Sir Donald, tearing open the
+envelope.
+
+He glanced at the note.
+
+"Is it to ask you to go somewhere to-night?" Sir Donald said.
+
+"Yes, but--"
+
+"I will go."
+
+"Please don't. It is only from a friend who is just round the corner in
+Stratton Street. If you will not mind his joining us here I will send
+him a message."
+
+He said a few words to his man.
+
+"That will be all right. Do come upstairs."
+
+"You are sure I am not in the way?"
+
+"I hope you will not find my friend in the way; that's all. He's an odd
+fellow at the best of times, and to-night he's got an attack of what he
+calls the blacks--his form of blues. But he's very talented. Carey is
+his name--Rupert Carey. You don't happen to know him?"
+
+"No. If I may say so, your room is charming."
+
+They were on the first floor now, in a chamber rather barely furnished
+and hung with blue-grey linen, against which were fastened several old
+Italian pictures in black frames. On the floor were some Eastern rugs in
+which faded and originally pale colours mingled. A log fire was burning
+on an open hearth, at right angles to which stood an immense sofa with a
+square back. This sofa was covered with dull blue stuff. Opposite to
+it was a large and low armchair, also covered in blue. A Steinway grand
+piano stood out in the middle of the room. It was open and there were
+no ornaments or photographs upon it. Its shining dark case reflected the
+flames which sprang up from the logs. Several dwarf bookcases of black
+wood were filled with volumes, some in exquisite bindings, some paper
+covered. On the top of the bookcases stood four dragon china vases
+filled with carnations of various colours. Electric lights burned just
+under the ceiling, but they were hidden from sight. In an angle of the
+wall, on a black ebony pedestal, stood an extremely beautiful marble
+statuette of a nude girl holding a fan. Under this, on a plaque, was
+written, "_Une Danseuse de Tunisie_."
+
+Sir Donald went up to it, and stood before it for two or three minutes
+in silence.
+
+"I see indeed you do care for beauty," he said at length. "But--forgive
+me--that fan makes that statuette wicked."
+
+"Yes, but a thousand times more charming. Carey said just the same thing
+when he saw it. I wonder I wonder what Lady Holme would say."
+
+They sat down on the sofa by the wood fire.
+
+"Carey could probably tell us!" Pierce added.
+
+"Oh, then your friend knows Lady Holme?"
+
+"He did once. I believe he isn't allowed to now. Ah, here is Carey!"
+
+A quick step was audible on the stairs, the door was opened, and a
+broad, middle-sized young man, with red hair, a huge red moustache
+and fierce red-brown eyes, entered swiftly with an air of ruthless
+determination.
+
+"I came, but I shall be devilish bad company to-night," he said at once,
+looking at Sir Donald.
+
+"We'll cheer you up. Let me introduce you to Sir Donald Ulford--Mr.
+Rupert Carey."
+
+Carey shook Sir Donald by the hand.
+
+"Glad to meet you," he said abruptly. "I've carried your Persian
+poems round the world with me. They lay in my trunk cheek by jowl with
+God-forsaken, glorious old Omar."
+
+A dusky red flush appeared in Sir Donald's hollow cheeks.
+
+"Really," he said, with obvious embarrassment, "I--they were a great
+failure. 'Obviously the poems of a man likely to be successful in
+dealing with finance,' as _The Times_ said in reviewing them."
+
+"Well, in the course of your career you've done some good things for
+England financially, haven't you?--not very publicly, perhaps, but as a
+minister abroad."
+
+"Yes. To come forward as a poet was certainly a mistake."
+
+"Any fool could see the faults in your book. True Persia all the same
+though. I saw all the faults and read 'em twenty times."
+
+He flung himself down in the big armchair. Sir Donald could see now that
+there was a shining of misery in his big, rather ugly, eyes.
+
+"Where have you two been?" he continued, with a directness that was
+almost rude.
+
+"Dining with the Holmes," answered Pierce.
+
+"That ruffian! Did she sing?"
+
+"Yes, twice."
+
+"Wish I'd heard her. Here am I playing Saul without a David. Many people
+there?"
+
+"Several. Lady Cardington--"
+
+"That white-haired enchantress! There's a Niobe--weeping not for her
+children, she never had any, but for her youth. She is the religion of
+half Mayfair, though I don't know whether she's got a religion. Men
+who wouldn't look at her when she was sixteen, twenty-six, thirty-six,
+worship her now she's sixty. And she weeps for her youth! Who else?"
+
+"Mrs. Wolfstein."
+
+"A daughter of Israel; coarse, intelligent, brutal to her reddened
+finger-tips. I'd trust her to judge a singer, actor, painter, writer.
+But I wouldn't trust her with my heart or half a crown."
+
+"Lady Manby."
+
+"Humour in petticoats. She's so infernally full of humour that there's
+no room in her for anything else. I doubt if she's got lungs. I'm sure
+she hasn't got a heart or a brain."
+
+"But if she is so full of humour," said Sir Donald mildly, "how does
+she--?"
+
+"How does a great writer fail over an addition sum? How does a man who
+speaks eight languages talk imbecility in them all? How is it that a
+bird isn't an angel? I wish to Heaven we knew. Well, Robin?"
+
+"Of course, Mr. Bry."
+
+Carey's violent face expressed disgust in every line.
+
+"One of the most finished of London types," he exclaimed. "No other city
+supplies quite the same sort of man to take the colour out of things.
+He's enormously clever, enormously abominable, and should have been
+strangled at birth merely because of his feet. Why he's not Chinese
+I can't conceive; why he dines out every night I can. He's a human
+cruet-stand without the oil. He's so monstrously intelligent that he
+knows what a beast he is, and doesn't mind. Not a bad set of people to
+talk with, unless Lady Holme was in a temper and you were next to her,
+or you were left stranded with Holme when the women went out of the
+dining-room."
+
+"You think Holme a poor talker?" asked Sir Donald.
+
+"Precious poor. His brain is muscle-bound, I believe. Robin, you know
+I'm miserable to-night you offer me nothing to drink."
+
+"I beg your pardon. Help yourself. And, Sir Donald, what will you--?"
+
+"Nothing, thank you."
+
+"Try one of those cigars."
+
+Sir Donald took one and lit it quietly, looking at Carey, who seemed to
+interest him a good deal.
+
+"Why are you miserable, Carey?" said Pierce, as the former buried his
+moustache in a tall whisky-and-soda.
+
+"Because I'm alive and don't want to be dead. Reason enough."
+
+"Because you're an unmitigated egoist," rejoined Pierce.
+
+"Yes, I am an egoist. Introduce me to a man who is not, will you?"
+
+"And what about women?"
+
+"Many women are not egoists. But you have been dining with one of the
+most finished egoists in London to-night."
+
+"Lady Holme?" said Sir Donald, shifting into the left-hand corner of the
+sofa.
+
+"Yes, Viola Holme, once Lady Viola Grantoun; whom I mustn't know any
+more."
+
+"I'm not sure that you are right, Carey," said Pierce, rather coldly.
+
+"What!"
+
+"Can a true and perfect egoist be in love?"
+
+"Certainly. Is not even an egoist an animal?"
+
+Pierce's lips tightened for a second, and his right hand strained itself
+round his knee, on which it was lying.
+
+"And how much can she be in love?"
+
+"Very much."
+
+"Do you mean with her body?"
+
+"Yes, I do; and with the spirit that lives in it. I don't believe
+there's any life but this. A church is more fantastic to me than the
+room in which Punch belabours Judy. But I say that there is spirit in
+lust, in hunger, in everything. When I want a drink my spirit wants it.
+Viola Holme's spirit--a flame that will be blown out at death--takes
+part in her love for that great brute Holme. And yet she's one of the
+most pronounced egoists in London."
+
+"Do you care to tell us any reason you may have for saying so?" said Sir
+Donald.
+
+As he spoke, his voice, brought into sharp contrast with the changeful
+and animated voice of Carey, sounded almost preposterously thin and worn
+out.
+
+"She is always conscious of herself in every situation, in every
+relation of life. While she loves even she thinks to herself, 'How
+beautifully I am loving!' And she never forgets for a single moment
+that she is a fascinating woman. If she were being murdered she would be
+saying silently, while the knife went in, 'What an attractive creature,
+what an unreplaceable personage they are putting an end to!'"
+
+"Rupert, you are really too absurd!" exclaimed Pierce, laughing
+reluctantly.
+
+"I'm not absurd. I see straight. Lady Holme is an egoist--a magnificent,
+an adorable egoist, fine enough in her brilliant selfishness to stand
+quite alone."
+
+"And you mean to tell us that any woman can do that?" exclaimed Pierce.
+
+"Who am I that I should pronounce a verdict upon the great mystery? What
+do I know of women?"
+
+"Far too much, I'm afraid," said Pierce.
+
+"Nothing, I have never been married, and only the married man knows
+anything of women. The Frenchmen are wrong. It is not the mistress who
+informs, it is the loving wife. For me the sex remains mysterious, like
+the heroine of my realm of dreams."
+
+"You are talking great nonsense, Rupert."
+
+"I always do when I am depressed, and I am very specially depressed
+to-night."
+
+"But why? There must be some very special reason."
+
+"There is. I, too, dined out and met at dinner a young man whose one
+desire in life appears to be to deprive living creatures of life."
+
+Sir Donald moved slightly.
+
+"You're not a sportsman, then, Mr. Carey?" he said.
+
+"Indeed, I am. I've shot big game, the Lord forgive me, and found big
+pleasure in doing it. Yet this young man depressed me. He was so robust,
+so perfectly happy, so supremely self-satisfied, and, according to his
+own account, so enormously destructive, that he made me feel very sick.
+He is married. He married a widow who has an ear-trumpet and a big
+shooting in Scotland. If she could be induced to crawl in underwood, or
+stand on a cairn against a skyline, I'm sure he'd pot at her for the fun
+of the thing."
+
+"What is his name?" asked Sir Donald.
+
+"I didn't catch it. My host called him Leo. He has--"
+
+"Ah! He is my only son."
+
+Pierce looked very uncomfortable, but Carey replied calmly:
+
+"Really. I wonder he hasn't shot you long ago."
+
+Sir Donald smiled.
+
+"Doesn't he depress you?" added Carey.
+
+"He does, I'm sorry to say, but scarcely so much as I depress him."
+
+"I think Lady Holme would like him."
+
+For once Sir Donald looked really expressive, of surprise and disgust.
+
+"Oh, I can't think so!" he said.
+
+"Yes, yes, she would. She doesn't care honestly for art-loving men. Her
+idea of a real man, the sort of man a woman marries, or bolts with, or
+goes off her head for, is a huge mass of bones and muscles and thews and
+sinews that knows not beauty. And your son would adore her, Sir Donald.
+Better not let him, though. Holme's a jealous devil."
+
+"Totally without reason," said Pierce, with a touch of bitterness.
+
+"No doubt. It's part of his Grand Turk nature. He ought to possess
+a Yildiz. He's out of place in London where marital jealousy is more
+unfashionable than pegtop trousers."
+
+He buried himself in his glass. Sir Donald rose to go.
+
+"I hope I may see you again," he said rather tentatively at parting. "I
+am to be found in the Albany."
+
+They both said they would call, and he slipped away gently.
+
+"There's a sensitive man," said Carey when he had gone. "A sort of male
+Lady Cardington. Both of them are morbidly conscious of their age and
+carry it about with them as if it were a crime. Yet they're both worth
+knowing. People with that temperament who don't use hair-dye must have
+grit. His son's awful."
+
+"And his poems?"
+
+"Very crude, very faulty, very shy, but the real thing. But he'll never
+publish anything again. It must have been torture to him to reveal as
+much as he did in that book. He must find others to express him, and
+such as him, to the world."
+
+"Lady Holmes?"
+
+"_Par exemple_. Deuced odd that while the dumb understand the whole
+show the person who's describing it quite accurately to them often knows
+nothing about it. Paradox, irony, blasted eternal cussedness of life!
+Did you ever know Lady Ulford?"
+
+"No."
+
+"She was a horse-dealer's daughter."
+
+"Rupert!"
+
+"On my honour! One of those women who are all shirt and collar and
+nattiness, with a gold fox for a tie-pin and a hunting-crop under the
+arm. She was killed schooling a horse in Mexico after making Ulford shy
+and uncomfortable for fifteen years. Lady Cardington and a Texas cowboy
+would have been as well suited to one another. Ulford's been like a
+wistful ghost, they tell me, ever since her death. I should like to see
+him and his son together."
+
+A hard and almost vicious gleam shone for as instant in his eyes.
+
+"You're as cruel as a Spaniard at a bull-fight."
+
+"My boy, I've been gored by the bull."
+
+Pierce was silent for a minute. He thought of Lady Holme's white-rose
+complexion and of the cessation of Carey's acquaintance with the Holmes.
+No one seemed to know exactly why Carey went to the house in Cadogan
+Square no more.
+
+"For God's sake give me another drink, Robin, and make it a stiff one."
+
+Pierce poured out the whisky and thought:
+
+"Could it have been that?"
+
+Carey emptied the tumbler and heaved a long sigh.
+
+"When d'you go back to Rome?"
+
+"Beginning of July."
+
+"You'll be there in the dead season."
+
+"I like Rome then. The heat doesn't hurt me and I love the peace.
+Antiquity seems to descend upon the city in August, returning to its own
+when America is far away."
+
+Carey stared at him hard.
+
+"A rising diplomatist oughtn't to live in the past," he said bluntly.
+
+"I like ruins."
+
+"Unless they're women."
+
+"If I loved a woman I could love her when she became what is called a
+ruin."
+
+"If you were an old man who had crumbled gradually with her."
+
+"As a young man, too. I was discussing--or rather flitting about,
+dinner-party fashion--that very subject to-night."
+
+"With whom?"
+
+"Viola."
+
+"The deuce! What line did you take?"
+
+"That one loves--if one loves--the kernel, not the shell."
+
+"And she?"
+
+"You know her--the opposite."
+
+"Ah!"
+
+"And you, Carey?"
+
+"I! I think if the shell is a beautiful shell and becomes suddenly
+broken it makes a devil of a lot of difference in what most people think
+of the kernel."
+
+"It wouldn't to me."
+
+"I think it would."
+
+"You take Viola's side then?"
+
+"And when did I ever do anything else? I'm off."
+
+He got up, nodded good-night, and was gone in a moment. Pierce heard him
+singing in a deep voice as he went down the stairs, and smiled with a
+faint contempt.
+
+"How odd it is that nobody will believe a man if he's fool enough to
+hint at the truth of his true self," he thought. "And Carey--who's so
+clever about people!"
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+WHEN the last guest had grimaced at her and left the drawing-room, Lady
+Holme stood with her hand on the mantelpiece, facing a tall mirror. She
+was alone for the moment. Her husband had accompanied Mrs. Wolfstein
+downstairs, and Lady Holme could hear his big, booming voice below,
+interrupted now and then by her impudent soprano. She spoke English with
+a slight foreign accent which men generally liked and women loathed.
+Lady Holme loathed it. But she was not fond of her own sex. She believed
+that all women were untrustworthy. She often said that she had never met
+a woman who was not a liar, and when she said it she had no doubt
+that, for once, a woman was speaking the truth. Now, as she heard Mrs.
+Wolfstein's curiously improper laugh, she frowned. The face in the
+mirror changed and looked almost old.
+
+This struck her unpleasantly. She kept the frown in its place and stared
+from under it, examining her features closely, fancying herself really
+an old woman, her whimsical fascination dead in its decaying home, her
+powers faded if not fled for ever. She might do what she liked then.
+It would all be of no use. Even the voice would be cracked and thin,
+unresponsive, unwieldy. The will would be phlegmatic. If it were not,
+the limbs and features would not easily obey its messages. The figure,
+now beautiful, would perhaps be marred by the ungracious thickness, the
+piteous fleshiness that Time often adds assiduously to ageing bodies, as
+if with an ironic pretence of generously giving in one direction
+while taking away in another. Decay would be setting in, life becoming
+perpetual loss. The precious years would be gone irrevocably.
+
+She let the frown go and looked again on her beauty and smiled. The
+momentary bitterness passed. For there were many precious years to come
+for her, many years of power. She was young. Her health was superb. Her
+looks were of the kind that lasts. She thought of a famous actress whom
+she resembled closely. This actress was already forty-three, and was
+still a lovely woman, still toured about the world winning the hearts of
+men, was still renowned for her personal charm, worshipped not only
+for her talent but for her delicious skin, her great romantic eyes, her
+thick, waving hair.
+
+Lady Holme laughed. In twenty years what Robin Pierce called her "husk"
+would still be an exquisite thing, and she would be going about without
+hearing the horrible tap, tap of the crutch in whose sustaining power
+she really believed so little. She knew men, and she said to herself, as
+she had said to Robin, that for them beauty lies in the epidermis.
+
+"Hullo, Vi, lookin' in the glass! 'Pon my soul, your vanity's
+disgustin'. A plain woman like you ought to keep away from such
+things--leave 'em to the Mrs. Wolfsteins--what?"
+
+Lady Holme turned round in time to see her husband's blunt, brown
+features twisted in the grimace which invariably preceded his portentous
+laugh.
+
+"I admire Mrs. Wolfstein," she said.
+
+The laugh burst like a bomb.
+
+"You admire another woman! Why, you're incapable of it. The Lord defend
+me from hypocrisy, and there's no greater hypocrisy than one woman
+takin' Heaven to witness that she thinks another a stunnin' beauty."
+
+"You know nothing about it, Fritz. Mrs. Wolfstein's eyes would be lovely
+if they hadn't that pawnbroking expression."
+
+"Good, good! Now we're goin' to hear the voice of truth. Think it went
+well, eh?"
+
+He threw himself down on a sofa and began to light a cigarette.
+
+"The evening? No, I don't."
+
+"Why not?"
+
+He crossed his long legs and leaned back, resting his head on a cushion,
+and puffing the smoke towards the ceiling.
+
+"They all seemed cheery--what? Even Lady Cardington only cried when you
+were squallin'."
+
+It was Lord Holme's habit to speak irreverently of anything he happened
+to admire.
+
+"She had reason to cry. Miss Filberte's accompaniment was a tragedy. She
+never comes here again."
+
+"What's the row with her? I thought her fingers got about over the piano
+awful quick."
+
+"They did--on the wrong notes."
+
+She came and sat down beside him.
+
+"You don't understand music, Fritz, thank goodness."
+
+"I know I don't. But why thank what's-his-name?"
+
+"Because the men that do are usually such anaemic, dolly things, such
+shaved poodles with their Sunday bows on."
+
+"What about that chap Pierce? He's up to all the scales and thingumies,
+isn't he?"
+
+"Robin--"
+
+"Pierce I said."
+
+"And I said Robin."
+
+Lord Holme frowned and stuck out his under jaw. When he was irritated
+he always made haste to look like a prize-fighter. His prominent
+cheek-bones, and the abnormal development of bone in the lower part
+of his face, helped the illusion whose creation was begun by his
+expression.
+
+"Look here, Vi," he said gruffly. "If you get up to any nonsense
+there'll be another Carey business. I give you the tip, and you can just
+take it in time. Don't you make any mistake. I'm not a Brenford, or a
+Godley-Halstoun, or a Pennisford, to sit by and--"
+
+"What a pity it is that your body's so big and your intelligence so
+small!" she interrupted gently. "Why aren't there Sandow exercises for
+increasing the brain?"
+
+"I've quite enough brain to rub along with very well. If I'd chosen to
+take it I could have been undersecretary---"
+
+"You've told me that so many times, old darling, and I really can't
+believe it. The Premier's very silly. Everybody knows that. But he's
+still got just a faint idea of the few things the country won't stand.
+And you are one of them, you truly are. You don't go down even with
+the Primrose League, and they simply worship at the shrine of the great
+Ar-rar."
+
+"Fool or not, I'd kick out Pierce as I kicked out Carey if I thought--"
+
+"And suppose I wouldn't let you?"
+
+Her voice had suddenly changed. There was in it the sharp sound which
+had so overwhelmed Miss Filberte.
+
+Lord Holme sat straight up and looked at his wife.
+
+"Suppose--what?"
+
+"Suppose I declined to let you behave ridiculously a second time."
+
+"Ridiculously! I like that! Do you stick out that Carey didn't love
+you?"
+
+"Half London loves me. I'm one of the most attractive women in it.
+That's why you married me, blessed boy."
+
+"Carey's a violent ass. Red-headed men always are. There's a chap at
+White's--"
+
+"I know, I know. You told me about him when you forbade poor Mr. Carey
+the house. But Robin's hair is black and he's the gentlest creature in
+diplomacy."
+
+"I wouldn't trust him a yard."
+
+"Believe me, he doesn't wish you to. He's far too clever to desire the
+impossible."
+
+"Then he can stop desirin' you."
+
+"Don't be insulting, Fritz. Remember that by birth you are a gentleman."
+
+Lord Holme bit through his cigarette.
+
+"Sometimes I wish you were an ugly woman," he muttered.
+
+"And if I were?"
+
+She leaned forward quite eagerly on the sofa and her whimsical,
+spoilt-child manner dropped away from her.
+
+"You ain't."
+
+"Don't be silly. I know I'm not, of course. But if I were to become
+one?"
+
+"What?"
+
+"Really, Fritz, there's no sort of continuity in your mental processes.
+If I were to become an ugly woman, what would you feel about me then?"
+
+"How the deuce could you become ugly?"
+
+"Oh, in a hundred ways. I might have smallpox and be pitted for life,
+or be scalded in the face as poor people's babies often are, or have
+vitriol thrown over me as lots of women do in Paris, or any number of
+things."
+
+"What rot! Who'd throw vitriol over you, I should like to know?"
+
+He lit a fresh cigarette with tender solicitude. Lady Holme began to
+look irritated.
+
+"Do use your imagination!" she cried.
+
+"Haven't got one, thank God!" he returned philosophically.
+
+"I insist upon your imagining me ugly. Do you hear, I insist upon it."
+
+She laid one soft hand on his knee and squeezed his leg with all her
+might.
+
+"Now you're to imagine me ugly and just the same as I am now."
+
+"You wouldn't be the same."
+
+"Yes, I should. I should be the same woman, with the same heart and
+feelings and desires and things as I have now. Only the face would be
+altered."
+
+"Well, go ahead, but don't pinch so, old girl."
+
+"I pinch you to make you exert your mind. Now tell me truly--truly;
+would you love me as you do now, would you be jealous of me, would
+you--"
+
+"I say, wait a bit! Don't drive on at such a rate. How ugly are you?"
+
+"Very ugly; worse than Miss Filberte."
+
+"Miss Filberte's not so bad."
+
+"Yes, she is, Fritz, you know she is. But I mean ever so much worse;
+with a purple complexion, perhaps, like Mrs. Armington, whose husband
+insisted on a judicial separation; or a broken nose, or something wrong
+with my mouth--"
+
+"What wrong?"
+
+"Oh, dear, anything! What _l'homme qui vir_ had--or a frightful scar
+across my cheek. Could you love me as you do now? I should be the same
+woman, remember."
+
+"Then it'd be all the same to me, I s'pose. Let's turn in."
+
+He got up, went over to the hearth, on which a small wood fire was
+burning, straddled his legs, bent his knees and straightened them
+several times, thrusting his hands into the pockets of his trousers,
+which were rather tight and horsey and defined his immense limbs. An
+expression of profound self-satisfaction illumined his face as he looked
+at his wife, giving it a slightly leery expression, as of a shrewd
+rustic. His large blunt features seemed to broaden, his big brown eyes
+twinkled, and his lips, which were thick and very red and had a cleft
+down their middle, parted under his short bronze moustache, exposing two
+level rows of square white teeth.
+
+"It's jolly difficult to imagine you an ugly woman," he said, with a
+deep chuckle.
+
+"I do wish you'd keep your legs still," said Lady Holme. "What earthly
+pleasure can it give you to go on like that? Would you love me as you do
+now?"
+
+"You'd be jolly sick if I didn't, wouldn't you, Vi, eh?"
+
+"I wonder if it ever occurs to you that you're hideously conceited,
+Fritz?"
+
+She spoke with a touch of real anger, real exasperation.
+
+"No more than any other Englishman that's worth his salt and ever does
+any good in the world. I ain't a timid molly-coddle, if that's what you
+mean."
+
+He took one large hand out of his pocket, scratched his cheek
+and yawned. As he did so he looked as unconcerned, as free from
+self-consciousness, as much a slave to every impulse born of passing
+physical sensation as a wild animal in a wood or out on a prairie.
+
+"Otherwise life ain't worth tuppence," he added through his yawn.
+
+Lady Holme sat looking at him for a moment in silence. She was really
+irritated by his total lack of interest in what she wanted to interest
+in him, irritated, too, because her curiosity remained unsatisfied. But
+that abrupt look and action of absolutely unconscious animalism, chasing
+the leeriness of the contented man's conceit, turned her to softness
+if not to cheerfulness. She adored Fritz like that. His open-mouthed,
+gaping yawn moved something in her to tenderness. She would have liked
+to kiss him while he was yawning and to pass her hands over his short
+hair, which was like a mat and grew as strongly as the hair which he
+shaved every morning from his brown cheeks.
+
+"Well, what about bed, old girl?" he said, stretching himself.
+
+Lady Holme did not reply. Some part of him, some joint, creaked as
+he forced his clasped hands downward and backward. She was listening
+eagerly for a repetition of the little sound.
+
+"What! Is mum the word?" he said, bending forward to stare into her
+face.
+
+At this moment the door opened, and a footman came in to extinguish the
+lights and close the piano. By mistake he let the lid of the latter
+drop with a bang. Lady Holme, who had just got up to go to bed, started
+violently. She said nothing but stared at him for an instant with an
+expression of cold rebuke on her face. The man reddened. Lord Holme was
+already on the stairs. He yawned again noisily, and turned the sound
+eventually into a sort of roaring chant up and down the scale as he
+mounted towards the next floor. Lady Holme came slowly after him. She
+had a very individual walk, moving from the hips and nearly always
+taking small, slow steps. Her sapphire-blue gown trailed behind her with
+a pretty noise over the carpet.
+
+When her French maid had locked up her jewels and helped her to undress,
+she dismissed her, and called out to Lord Holme, who was in the next
+room, the door of which was slightly open.
+
+"Fritz!"
+
+"Girlie?"
+
+His mighty form, attired in pale blue pyjamas, stood in the doorway.
+In his hand he grasped a toothbrush, and there were dabs of white
+tooth-powder on his cheeks and chin.
+
+"Finish your toilet and make haste."
+
+He disappeared. There was a prolonged noise of brushing and the gurgling
+and splashing of water. Lady Holme sat down on the white couch at the
+foot of the great bed. She was wrapped in a soft white gown made like a
+burnous, a veritable Arab garment, with a white silk hood at the back,
+and now she put up her hands and, with great precision, drew the hood up
+over her head. The burnous, thus adjusted, made her look very young. She
+had thrust her bare feet into white slippers without heels, and now she
+drew up her legs lightly and easily and crossed them under her, assuming
+an Eastern attitude and the expression of supreme impassivity which
+suits it. A long mirror was just opposite to her. She swayed to and fro,
+looking into it.
+
+"Allah-Akbar!" she murmured. "Allah-Akbar! I am a fatalist. Everything
+is ordained, so why should I bother? I will live for the day. I will
+live for the night. Allah-Akbar, Allah-Akbar!"
+
+The sound of water gushing from a reversed tumbler into a full basin was
+followed by the reappearance of Lord Holme, looking very clean and very
+sleepy.
+
+Lady Holme stopped swaying.
+
+"You look like a kid of twelve years old in that thing, Vi," he
+observed, surveying her with his hands on his hips.
+
+"I am a woman with a philosophy," she returned with dignity.
+
+"A philosophy! What the deuce is that?"
+
+"You didn't learn much at Eton and Christchurch."
+
+"I learnt to use my fists and to make love to the women."
+
+"You're a brute!" she exclaimed with most unphilosophic vehemence.
+
+"And that's why you worship the ground I tread on," he rejoined equably.
+"And that's why I've always had a good time with the women ever since I
+stood six foot in my stockin's when I was sixteen."
+
+Lady Holme looked really indignant. Her face was contorted by a spasm.
+She was one of those unfortunate women who are capable of retrospective
+jealousy.
+
+"I won't--how dare you speak to me of those women?" she said bitterly.
+"You insult me."
+
+"Hang it, there's no one since you, Vi. You know that. And what would
+you have thought of a great, hulkin' chap like me who'd never--well, all
+right. I'll dry up. But you know well enough you wouldn't have looked at
+me."
+
+"I wonder why I ever did."
+
+"No, you don't. I'm just the chap to suit you. You're full of whimsies
+and need a sledge-hammer fellow to keep you quiet. It you'd married that
+ass, Carey, or that--"
+
+"Fritz, once for all, I won't have my friends abused. I allowed you to
+have your own way about Rupert Carey, but I will not have Robin Pierce
+or anyone else insulted. Please understand that. I married to be more
+free, not more--"
+
+"You married because you'd fallen jolly well in love with me, that's why
+you married, and that's why you're a damned lucky woman. Come to bed.
+You won't, eh?"
+
+He made a stride, snatched Lady Holme up as if she were a bundle, and
+carried her off to bed.
+
+She was on the point of bursting into angry tears, but when she found
+herself snatched up, her slippers tumbling off, the hood of the burnous
+falling over her eyes, her face crushed anyhow against her husband's
+sinewy chest, she suddenly felt oddly contented, disinclined to protest
+or to struggle.
+
+Lord Holme did not trouble himself to ask what she was feeling or why
+she was feeling it.
+
+He thought of himself--the surest way to fasten upon a man the thoughts
+of others.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+ROBIN PIERCE and Carey were old acquaintances, if not exactly old
+friends. They had been for a time at Harrow together. Pierce had six
+thousand a year and worked hard for a few hundreds. Carey had a thousand
+and did nothing. He had never done anything definite, anything to earn a
+living. Yet his talents were notorious. He played the piano well for
+an amateur, was an extraordinarily clever mimic, acted better than most
+people who were not on the stage, and could write very entertaining
+verse with a pungent, sub-acid flavour. But he had no creative power and
+no perseverance. As a critic of the performances of others he was cruel
+but discerning, giving no quarter, but giving credit where it was due.
+He loathed a bad workman more than a criminal, and would rather have
+crushed an incompetent human being than a worm. Secretly he despised
+himself. His own laziness was as disgusting to him as a disease, and
+was as incurable as are certain diseases. He was now thirty-four and
+realised that he was never going to do anything with his life. Already
+he had travelled over the world, seen a hundred, done a hundred things.
+He had an enormous acquaintance in Society and among artists; writers,
+actors, painters--all the people who did things and did them well. As a
+rule they liked him, despite his bizarre bluntness of speech and manner,
+and they invariably spoke of him as a man of great talent; he said
+because he was so seldom fool enough to do anything that could reveal
+incompetence. His mother, who was a widow, lived in the north, in an
+old family mansion, half house, half castle, near the sea coast of
+Cumberland. He had one sister, who was married to an American.
+
+Carey always declared that he was that _rara avis_ an atheist, and that
+he had been born an atheist. He affirmed that even when a child he had
+never, for a moment, felt that there could be any other life than
+this earth-life. Few people believed him. There are few people who can
+believe in a child atheist.
+
+Pierce had a totally different character. He seemed to be more dreamy
+and was more energetic, talked much less and accomplished much more. It
+had always been his ambition to be a successful diplomat, and in many
+respects he was well fitted for a diplomatic career. He had a talent for
+languages, great ease of manner, self-possession, patience and cunning.
+He loved foreign life. Directly he set foot in a country which was
+not his own he felt stimulated. He felt that he woke up, that his mind
+became more alert, his imagination more lively. He delighted in change,
+in being brought into contact with a society which required study to be
+understood. His present fate contented him well enough. He liked Rome
+and was liked there. As his mother was a Roman he had many Italian
+connections, and he was far more at ease with Romans than with the
+average London man. His father and mother lived almost perpetually
+in large hotels. The former, who was enormously rich, was a _malade
+imaginaire_. He invariably spoke of his quite normal health as if it
+were some deadly disease, and always treated himself, and insisted on
+being treated, as if he were an exceptionally distinguished invalid.
+In the course of years his friends had learned to take his view of the
+matter, and he was at this time almost universally spoken of as "that
+poor Sir Henry Pierce whose life has been one long martyrdom." Poor
+Sir Henry was fortunate in the possession of a wife who really was a
+martyr--to him. Nobody had ever discovered whether Lady Pierce knew, or
+did not know, that her husband was quite as well as most people. There
+are many women with such secrets. Robin's parents were at present taking
+baths and drinking waters in Germany. They were later going for an
+"after cure" to Switzerland, and then to Italy to "keep warm" during the
+autumn. As they never lived in London, Robin had no home there except
+his little house in Half Moon Street. He had one brother, renowned as
+a polo player, and one sister, who was married to a rising politician,
+Lord Evelyn Clowes, a young man with a voluble talent, a peculiar power
+of irritating Chancellors of the Exchequer, and hair so thick that he
+was adored by the caricaturists.
+
+Robin Pierce and Carey saw little of each other now, being generally
+separated by a good many leagues of land and sea, but when they met they
+were still fairly intimate. They had some real regard for each
+other. Carey felt at ease in giving his violence to the quiet and
+self-possessed young secretary, who was three years his junior, but who
+sometimes seemed to him the elder of the two, perhaps because calm is
+essentially the senior of storm. He had even allowed Robin to guess
+at the truth of his feeling for Lady Holme, though he had never been
+explicit, on the subject to him or to anyone. There were moments
+when Robin wished he had not been permitted to guess, for Lady Holme
+attracted him far more than any other woman he had seen, and he had
+proposed to her before she had been carried off by her husband. He
+admired her beauty, but he did not believe that it was her beauty which
+had led him into love. He was sure that he loved the woman in her,
+the hidden woman whom Lord Holme and the world at large--including
+Carey--knew nothing about. He thought that Lady Holme herself did not
+understand this hidden woman, did not realise, as he did, that she
+existed. She spoke to him sometimes in Lady Holme's singing, sometimes
+in an expression in her eyes when she was serious, sometimes even in
+a bodily attitude. For Robin, half fantastically, put faith in the
+eloquence of line as a revealer of character, of soul. But she did not
+speak to him in Lady Holme's conversation. He really thought this hidden
+woman was obscured by the lovely window--he conceived it as a window of
+exquisite stained glass, jewelled but concealing--through which she was
+condemned to look for ever, through which, too, all men must look at
+her. He really wished sometimes, as he had said, that Lady Holme were
+ugly, for he had a fancy that perhaps then, and only then, would
+the hidden woman arise and be seen as a person may be seen through
+unstained, clear glass. He really felt that what he loved would be there
+to love if the face that ruled was ruined; would not only still be
+there to love, but would become more powerful, more true to itself, more
+understanding of itself, more reliant, purer, braver. And he had learnt
+to cherish this fancy till it had become a little monomania. Robin
+thought that the world misunderstood him, but he knew the world too well
+to say so. He never risked being laughed at. He felt sure that he
+was passionate, that he was capable of romantic deeds, of Quixotic
+self-sacrifice, of a devotion that might well be sung by poets, and that
+would certainly be worshipped by ardent women. And he said to himself
+that Lady Holme was the one woman who could set free, if the occasion
+came, this passionate, unusual and surely admirable captive at present
+chained within him, doomed to inactivity and the creeping weakness that
+comes from enforced repose.
+
+Carey's passion for Lady Holme had come into being shortly before
+her marriage. No one knew much about it, or about the rupture of all
+relations between him and the Holmes which had eventually taken place.
+But the fact that Carey had lost his head about Lady Holme was known
+to half London. For Carey, when carried away, was singularly reckless;
+singularly careless of consequences and of what people thought. It was
+difficult to influence him, but when influenced he was almost painfully
+open in his acknowledgment of the power that had reached him. As a rule,
+however, despite his apparent definiteness, his decisive violence, there
+seemed to be something fluid in his character, something that divided
+and flowed away from anything which sought to grasp and hold it. He
+had impetus but not balance; swiftness, but a swiftness that was
+uncontrolled. He resembled a machine without a brake.
+
+It was soon after his rupture with the Holmes that his intimates began
+to notice that he was becoming inclined to drink too much. When Pierce
+returned to London from Rome he was immediately conscious of the slight
+alteration in his friend. Once he remonstrated with Carey about it.
+Carey was silent for a moment. Then he said abruptly:
+
+"My heart wants to be drowned."
+
+Lord Holme hated Carey. Yet Lady Holme had not loved him; though she had
+not objected to him more than to other men because he loved her. She had
+been brought up in a society which is singularly free from prejudices,
+which has no time to study carefully questions of so-called honour,
+which has little real religious feeling, and a desire for gaiety which
+perhaps takes the place of a desire for morals. Intrigues are one of the
+chief amusements of this society, which oscillates from London to Paris
+as the pendulum of a clock oscillates from right to left. Lady Holme,
+however, happened to be protected doubly against the dangers--or joys
+by the way--to which so many of her companions fell cheerful, and even
+chattering, victims. She had a husband who though extremely stupid was
+extremely masterful, and, for the time at any rate, she sincerely loved
+him. She was a faithful wife and had no desire to be anything else,
+though she liked to be, and usually was, in the fashion. But though
+faithful to Lord Holme she had, as has been said, both the appearance
+and the temperament of a siren. She enjoyed governing men, and those who
+were governed by her, who submitted obviously to the power of her beauty
+and the charm of manner that seemed to emanate from it, and to be one
+with it, were more attractive to her than those who were not. She
+was inclined to admire a man for loving her, as a serious and
+solemn-thinking woman, with bandeaux and convictions, admires a
+clergyman for doing his duty. Carey had done his duty with such fiery
+ardour that, though she did not prevent her husband from kicking him out
+of the house, she could not refrain from thinking well of him.
+
+Her thoughts of Robin Pierce were perhaps a little more confused.
+
+She had not accepted him. Carey would have said that he was not "her
+type." Although strong and active he was not the huge mass of bones and
+muscles and thews and sinews, ignorant of beauty and devoid of the love
+of art, which Carey had described as her ideal. There was melancholy and
+there was subtlety in him. When Lady Holme was a girl this melancholy
+and subtlety had not appealed to her sufficiently to induce her to
+become Lady Viola Pierce. Nevertheless, Robin's affection for her, and
+the peculiar form it took--of idealising her secret nature and wishing
+her obvious beauty away--had won upon the egoism of her. Although she
+laughed at his absurdity, as she called it, and honestly held to her
+Pagan belief that physical beauty was all in all to the world she wished
+to influence, it pleased her sometimes to fancy that perhaps he was
+right, that perhaps her greatest loveliness was hidden and dwelt apart.
+The thought was flattering, and though her knowledge of men rejected the
+idea that such a loveliness alone could ever command an empire worth the
+ruling, she could have no real objection to being credited with a double
+share of charm--the charm of face and manner which everyone, including
+herself, was aware that she possessed, and that other stranger, more dim
+and mysterious charm at whose altar Robin burnt an agreeably perfumed
+incense.
+
+She had a peculiar power of awakening in others that which she usually
+seemed not to possess herself--imagination, passion, not only physical
+but ethereal and of the mind; a tenderness for old sorrows, desire for
+distant, fleeting, misty glories not surely of this earth. She was
+a brilliant suggestionist, but not in conversation. Her face and her
+voice, when she sang, were luring to the lovers of beauty. When she sang
+she often expressed for them the under-thoughts and under-feelings of
+secretly romantic, secretly wistful men and women, and drew them to her
+as if by a spell. But her talk and manner in conversation were so unlike
+her singing, so little accorded with the look that often came into her
+eyes while she sang, that she was a perpetual puzzle to such elderly
+men as Sir Donald Ulford, to such young men as Robin Pierce, and even to
+some women. They came about her like beggars who have heard a chink of
+gold, and she showed them a purse that seemed to be empty.
+
+Was it the _milieu_ in which she lived, the influence of a vulgar and
+greedy age, which prevented her from showing her true self except in
+her art? Or was she that stupefying enigma sometimes met with, an
+unintelligent genius?
+
+There were some who wondered.
+
+In her singing she seemed to understand, to love, to pity, to enthrone.
+In her life she often seemed not to understand, not to love, not to
+pity, not to place high.
+
+She sang of Venice, and those who cannot even think of the city in the
+sea without a flutter of the heart, a feeling not far from soft pain in
+its tenderness and gratitude, listened to the magic bells at sunset, and
+glided in the fairy barques across the liquid plains of gold. She
+spoke of Venice, and they heard only the famished voice of the mosquito
+uttering its midnight grace before meat.
+
+Which was the real Venice?
+
+Which was the real woman?
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+ON the following day, which was warm and damp; Lady Holme drove to Bond
+Street, bought two new hats, had her hand read by a palmist who called
+himself "Cupido," looked in at a ladies' club and then went to Mrs.
+Wolfstein, with whom she was engaged to lunch. She did not wish to lunch
+with her. She disliked Mrs. Wolfstein as she disliked most women, but
+she had not been able to get out of it. Mrs. Wolfstein had overheard
+her saying to Lady Cardington that she had nothing particular to do till
+four that day, and had immediately "pinned her." Besides disliking
+Mrs. Wolfstein, Lady Holme was a little afraid of her. Like many clever
+Jewesses, Mrs. Wolfstein was a ruthless conversationalist, and enjoyed
+showing off at the expense of others, even when they were her guests.
+She had sometimes made Lady Holme feel stupid, even feel as if a good
+talker might occasionally gain, and keep, an advantage over a lovely
+woman who did not talk so well. The sensation passed, but the fact that
+it had ever been did not draw Lady Holme any closer to the woman with
+the "pawnbroking expression" in her eyes.
+
+Mrs. Wolfstein was not in the most exclusive set in London, but she was
+in the smart set, which is no longer exclusive although it sometimes
+hopes it is. She knew the racing people, nearly all the most fashionable
+Jews, and those very numerous English patricians who like to go where
+money is. She also knew the whole of Upper Bohemia, and was a _persona
+gratissima_ in that happy land of talent and jealousy. She entertained
+a great deal, generally at modish restaurants. Many French and Germans
+were to be met with at her parties; and it was impossible to be with
+either them or her for many minutes without hearing the most hearty and
+whole-souled abuse of English aspirations, art, letters and cooking.
+The respectability, the pictures, the books and the boiled cabbage of
+Britain all came impartially under the lash.
+
+Mrs. Wolfstein's origin was obscure. That she was a Jewess was known to
+everybody, but few could say with certainty whether she was a German,
+a Spanish, a Polish or an Eastern Jewess. She had much of the covert
+coarseness and open impudence of a Levantine, and occasionally said
+things which made people wonder whether, before she became Amalia
+Wolfstein, she had not perhaps been--well really--something very strange
+somewhere a long way off.
+
+Her husband was shocking to look at: small, mean, bald, Semitic and
+nervous, with large ears which curved outwards from his head like
+leaves, and cheeks blue from much shaving. He was said to hide behind
+his anxious manner an acuteness that was diabolic, and to have earned
+his ill-health by sly dissipations for which he had paid enormous
+sums. There were two Wolfstein children, a boy and a girl of eleven and
+twelve; small, swarthy, frog-like, self-possessed. They already spoke
+three languages, and their protruding eyes looked almost diseased with
+intelligence.
+
+The Wolfstein house, which was in Curzon Street, was not pretty,
+Apparently neither Mrs. Wolfstein nor her husband, who was a financier
+and company promoter on a very large scale, had good taste in furniture
+and decoration. The mansion was spacious but dingy. There was a great
+deal of chocolate and fiery yellow paint. There were many stuffy brown
+carpets, and tables which were unnecessarily solid. In the hall were
+pillars which looked as if they were made of brawn, and arches
+with lozenges of azure paint in which golden stars appeared rather
+meretriciously. A plaster statue of Hebe, with crinkly hair and staring
+eyeballs, stood in a corner without improving matters. That part of the
+staircase which was not concealed by the brown carpet was dirty white.
+An immense oil painting of a heap of dead pheasants, rabbits and wild
+duck, lying beside a gun and a pair of leather gaiters, immediately
+faced the hall door, which was opened by two enormous men with yellow
+complexions and dissipated eyes. Mrs. Wolfstein was at home, and one
+of the enormous men lethargically showed Lady Holme upstairs into a
+drawing-room which suggested a Gordon Hotel. She waited for about five
+minutes on a brown and yellow sofa near a table on which lay some books
+and several paper-knives, and then Mrs. Wolfstein appeared. She was
+dressed very smartly in blue and red, and looked either Oriental or
+Portuguese, as she came in. Lady Holme was not quite certain which.
+
+"Dear person!" she said, taking Lady Holme's hands in hers, which were
+covered with unusually large rings. "Now, I've got a confession to make.
+What a delicious hat!"
+
+Lady Holme felt certain the confession was of something unpleasant,
+but she only said, in the rather languid manner she generally affected
+towards women:
+
+"Well? My ear is at the grating."
+
+"My lunch is at the Carlton."
+
+Lady Holme was pleased. At the Carlton one can always look about.
+
+"And--it's a woman's lunch."
+
+Lady Holme's countenance fell quite frankly.
+
+"I knew you'd be horrified. You think us such bores, and so we are. But
+I couldn't resist being malicious to win such a triumph. You at a hen
+lunch! It'll be the talk of London. Can you forgive me?"
+
+"Of course."
+
+"And can you stand it?"
+
+Lady Holme looked definitely dubious.
+
+"I'll tell you who'll be there--Lady Cardington, Lady Manby, Mrs.
+Trent--do you know her? Spanish looking, and's divorced two husbands,
+and's called the scarlet woman because she always dresses in red--Sally
+Perceval, Miss Burns and Pimpernel Schley."
+
+"Pimpernel Schley! Who is she?"
+
+"The American actress who plays all the improper modern parts. Directly
+a piece is produced in Paris that we run over to see--you know the sort!
+the Grand Duke and foreign Royalty species--she has it adapted for her.
+Of course it's Bowdlerised as to words, but she manages to get back all
+that's been taken out in her acting. Young America's crazy about her.
+She's going to play over here."
+
+"Oh!"
+
+Lady Holme's voice was not encouraging, but Mrs. Wolfstein was not
+sensitive. She chattered gaily all the way to the Haymarket. When they
+came into the Palm Court they found Lady Cardington already there,
+seated tragically in an armchair, and looking like a weary empress.
+The band was playing on the balcony just outside the glass wall which
+divides the great dining-room from the court, and several people were
+dotted about waiting for friends, or simply killing time by indulging
+curiosity. Among them was a large, broad-shouldered young man, with
+a round face, contemptuous blue eyes and a mouth with chubby, pouting
+lips. He was well dressed, but there was a touch of horseyness in the
+cut of his trousers, the arrangement of his tie. He sat close to the
+band, tipping his green chair backwards and smoking a cigarette.
+
+As Mrs. Wolfstein and Lady Holme went up to greet Lady Cardington, Sally
+Perceval and Mrs. Trent came in together, followed almost immediately by
+Lady Manby.
+
+Sally Perceval was a very pretty young married woman, who spent most
+of her time racing, gambling and going to house parties. She looked
+excessively fragile and consumptive, but had lived hard and never had
+a day's illness in her life. She was accomplished, not at all
+intellectual, clever at games, a fine horsewoman and an excellent
+swimmer. She had been all over the world with her husband, who was very
+handsome and almost idiotic, and who could not have told you what
+the Taj was, whether Thebes was in Egypt or India, or what was the
+difference, if any, between the Golden Gate and the Golden Horn.
+Mrs. Trent was large, sultry, well-informed and supercilious; had the
+lustrous eyes of a Spaniard, and spoke in a warm contralto voice. Her
+figure was magnificent, and she prided herself on having a masculine
+intellect. Her enemies said that she had a more than masculine temper.
+
+Lady Manby had been presented by Providence with a face like a teapot,
+her nose being the spout and her cheeks the bulging sides. She saw
+everything in caricature. If war were spoken of, her imagination
+immediately conjured up visions of unwashed majors conspicuously absurd
+in toeless boots, of fat colonels forced to make merry on dead rats,
+of field-marshals surprised by the enemy in their nightshirts, and of
+common soldiers driven to repair their own clothes and preposterously
+at work on women's tasks. She adored the clergy for their pious humours,
+the bench for its delicious attempts at dignity, the bar for its
+grotesque travesties of passionate conviction--lies with their wigs
+on--the world political for its intrigues dressed up in patriotism.
+A Lord Chancellor in full state seemed to her the most delightfully
+ridiculous phenomenon in a delightfully ridiculous universe. And she had
+once been obliged to make a convulsive exit from an English cathedral,
+in which one hundred colonial bishops were singing a solemn hymn,
+entirely devastated by the laughter waked in her by this most sacred
+spectacle.
+
+Miss Burns, who hurried in breathlessly ten minutes late, was very thin,
+badly dressed and insignificant-looking, wore her hair short, and could
+not see you if you were more than four feet away from her. She had been
+on various lonely and distant travelling excursions, about which she had
+written books, had consorted merrily with naked savages, sat in the oily
+huts of Esquimaux, and penetrated into the interior of China dressed as
+a man. Her lack of affectation hit you in the face on a first meeting,
+and her sincerity was perpetually embroiling her with the persistent
+liars who, massed together, formed what is called decent society.
+
+"I know I'm late," she said, pushing her round black hat askew on her
+shaggy little head. "I know I've kept you all waiting. Pardon!"
+
+"Indeed you haven't," replied Mrs. Wolfstein. "Pimpernel Schley isn't
+here yet. She lives in the hotel, so of course she'll turn up last."
+
+Mrs. Trent put one hand on her hip and stared insolently at the various
+groups of people in the court, Lady Cardington sighed, and Lady Holme
+assumed a vacant look, which suited her mental attitude at the moment.
+She generally began to feel rather vacant if she were long alone with
+women.
+
+Another ten minutes passed.
+
+"I'm famishing," said Sally Perceval. "I've been at the Bath Club
+diving, and I do so want my grub. Let's skip in."
+
+"It really is too bad--oh, here she comes!" said Mrs. Wolfstein.
+
+Many heads in the Palm Court were turned towards the stairs, down which
+a demure figure was walking with extreme slowness. The big young man
+with the round face got up from his chair and looked greedy, and
+the waiters standing by the desk just inside the door glanced round,
+whispered, and smiled quickly before gliding off to their different
+little tables.
+
+Pimpernel Schley was alone, but she moved as if she were leading a quiet
+procession of vestal virgins. She was dressed in white, with a black
+velvet band round her tiny waist and a large black hat. Her shining,
+straw-coloured hair was fluffed out with a sort of ostentatious
+innocence on either side of a broad parting, and she kept her round chin
+tucked well in as she made what was certainly an effective entrance. Her
+arms hung down at her sides, and in one hand she carried a black fan.
+She wore no gloves, and many diamond rings glittered on her small
+fingers, the rosy nails of which were trimmed into points. As she drew
+near to Mrs. Wolfstein's party she walked slower and slower, as if she
+felt that she was arriving at a destination much too soon.
+
+Lady Holme watched her as she approached, examined her with that
+piercing scrutiny in which the soul of one woman is thrust out, like a
+spear, towards the soul of another. She noticed at once that Miss Schley
+resembled her, had something of her charm of fairness. It was a fainter,
+more virginal charm than hers. The colouring of hair and eyes was
+lighter. The complexion was a more dead, less warm, white. But there was
+certainly a resemblance. Miss Schley was almost exactly her height, too,
+and--
+
+Lady Holme glanced swiftly round the Palm Court. Of all the women
+gathered there Pimpernel Schley and herself were nearest akin in
+appearance.
+
+As she recognised this fact Lady Holme felt hostile to Miss Schley.
+
+Not until the latter was almost touching her hostess did she lift her
+eyes from the ground. Then she stood still, looked up calmly, and said,
+in a drawling and infantine voice:
+
+"I had to see my trunks unpacked, but I was bound to be on time. I
+wouldn't have come down to-day for any soul in the world but you. I
+would not."
+
+It was a pretty speaking voice, clear and youthful, with a choir-boyish
+sound in it, and remarkably free from nasal twang, but it was not a
+lady's voice. It sounded like the frontispiece of a summer number become
+articulate.
+
+Mrs. Wolfstein began to introduce Miss Schley to her guests, none of
+whom, it seemed, knew her. She bowed to each of them, still with the
+vestal virgin air, and said, "Glad to know you!" to each in turn without
+looking at anyone. Then Mrs. Wolfstein led the way into the restaurant.
+
+Everyone looked at the party of women as they came in and ranged
+themselves round a table in the middle of the big room. Lady Cardington
+sat on one side of Mrs. Wolfstein and Lady Holme on the other, between
+her and Mrs. Trent. Miss Schley was exactly opposite. She kept her eyes
+eternally cast down like a nun at Benediction. All the quite young men
+who could see her were looking at her with keen interest, and two
+or three of them--probably up from Sandhurst--had already assumed
+expressions calculated to alarm modesty. Others looked mournfully
+fatuous, as if suddenly a prey to lasting and romantic grief. The older
+men were more impartial in their observation of Mrs. Wolfstein's guests.
+And all the women, without exception, fixed their eyes upon Lady Holme's
+hat.
+
+Lady Cardington, who seemed oppressed by grief, said to Mrs. Wolfstein:
+
+"Did you see that article in the _Daily Mail_ this morning?"
+
+"Which one?"
+
+"On the suggestion to found a school in which the only thing to be
+taught would be happiness."
+
+"Who's going to be the teacher?"
+
+"Some man. I forget the name."
+
+"A man!" said Mrs. Trent, in a slow, veiled contralto voice. "Why, men
+are always furious if they think we have any pleasure which they can't
+deprive us of at a minute's notice. A man is the last two-legged thing
+to be a happiness teacher."
+
+"Whom would you have then?" said Lady Cardington.
+
+"Nobody, or a child."
+
+"Of which sex?" said Mrs. Wolfstein.
+
+"The sex of a child," replied Mrs. Trent.
+
+Mrs. Wolfstein laughed rather loudly.
+
+"I think children are the most greedy, unsatisfied individuals in--" she
+began.
+
+"I was not alluding to Curzon Street children," observed Mrs. Trent,
+interrupting. "When I speak in general terms of anything I always except
+London."
+
+"Why?" said Sally Perceval.
+
+"Because it's no more natural, no more central, no more in line with the
+truth of things than you are, Sally."
+
+"But, my dear, you surely aren't a belated follower of Tolstoi!" cried
+Mrs. Wolfstein. "You don't want us all to live like day labourers."
+
+"I don't want anybody to do anything, but if happiness is to be taught
+it must not be by a man or by a Londoner."
+
+"I had no idea you had been caught by the cult of simplicity," said Mrs.
+Wolfstein. "But you are so clever. You reveal your dislikes but conceal
+your preferences. Most women think that if they only conceal their
+dislikes they are quite perfectly subtle."
+
+"Subtle people are delicious," said Lady Manby, putting her mouth on
+one side. "They remind me of a kleptomaniac I once knew who had a little
+pocket closed by a flap let into the front of her gown. When she dined
+out she filled it with scraps. Once she dined with us and I saw her,
+when she thought no one was watching, peppering her pocket with cayenne,
+and looking so delightfully sly and thieving. Subtle people are always
+peppering their little pockets and thinking nobody sees them."
+
+"And lots of people don't," said Mrs. Wolfstein.
+
+"The vices are divinely comic," continued Lady Manby, looking every
+moment more like a teapot. "I think it's such a mercy. Fancy what a lot
+of fun we should lose if there were no drunkards, for instance!"
+
+Lady Cardington looked shocked.
+
+"The virtues are often more comic than the vices," said Mrs. Trent,
+with calm authority. "Dramatists know that. Think of the dozens of good
+farces whose foundation is supreme respectability in contact with the
+wicked world."
+
+"I didn't know anyone called respectability a virtue," cried Sally
+Perceval.
+
+"Oh, all the English do in their hearts," said Mrs. Wolfstein.
+"Pimpernel, are you Yankees as bad?"
+
+Miss Schley was eating _sole a la Colbert_ with her eyes on her plate.
+She ate very slowly and took tiny morsels. Now she looked up.
+
+"We're pretty respectable over in America, I suppose," she drawled. "Why
+not? What harm does it do anyway?"
+
+"Well, it limits the inventive faculties for one thing. If one is
+strictly respectable life is plain sailing."
+
+"Oh, life is never that," said Mrs. Trent, "for women."
+
+Lady Cardington seemed touched by this remark.
+
+"Never, never," she said in her curious voice--a voice in which tears
+seemed for ever to be lingering. "We women are always near the rocks."
+
+"Or on them," said Mrs. Trent, thinking doubtless of the two husbands
+she had divorced.
+
+"I like a good shipwreck," exclaimed Miss Burns in a loud tenor voice.
+"I was in two before I was thirty, one off Hayti and one off Java, and
+I enjoyed them both thoroughly. They wake folks up and make them show
+their mettle."
+
+"It's always dangerous to speak figuratively if she's anywhere about,"
+murmured Mrs. Wolfstein to Lady Holme. "She'll talk about lowering boats
+and life-preservers now till the end of lunch."
+
+Lady Holme started. She had not been listening to the conversation but
+had been looking at Miss Schley. She had noticed instantly the effect
+created in the room by the actress's presence in it. The magic of a
+name flits, like a migratory bird, across the Atlantic. Numbers of the
+youthful loungers of London had been waiting impatiently during the last
+weeks for the arrival of this pale and demure star. Now that she
+had come their interest in her was keen. Her peculiar reputation for
+ingeniously tricking Mrs. Bowdler, secretary to Mrs. Grundy, rendered
+her very piquant, and this piquancy was increased by her ostentatiously
+vestal appearance.
+
+Lady Holme was sometimes clairvoyante. At this moment every nerve in her
+body seemed telling her that the silent girl, who sat there nibbling her
+lunch composedly, was going to be the rage in London. It did not matter
+at all whether she had talent or not. Lady Holme saw that directly,
+as she glanced from one little table to another at the observant,
+whispering men.
+
+She felt angry with Miss Schley for resembling her in colouring, for
+resembling her in another respect--capacity for remaining calmly silent
+in the midst of fashionable chatterboxes.
+
+"Will she?" she said to Mrs. Wolfstein.
+
+"Yes. If she'd never been shipwrecked she'd have been almost
+entertaining, but--there's Sir Donald Ulford trying to attract your
+attention."
+
+"Where?"
+
+She looked and saw Sir Donald sitting opposite to the large young man
+with the contemptuous blue eyes and the chubby mouth. They both seemed
+very bored. Sir Donald bowed.
+
+"Who is that with him?" asked Lady Holme.
+
+"I don't know," said Mrs. Wolfstein. "He looks like a Cupid who's been
+through Sandow's school. He oughtn't to wear anything but wings."
+
+"It's Sir Donald's son, Leo," said Lady Cardington.
+
+Pimpernel Schley lifted her eyes for an instant from her plate, glanced
+at Leo Ulford, and cast them down again.
+
+"Leo Ulford's a blackguard," observed Mrs. Trent. "And when a fair man's
+a blackguard he's much more dangerous than a dark man."
+
+All the women stared at Leo Ulford with a certain eagerness.
+
+"He's good-looking," said Sally Perceval. "But I always distrust
+cherubic people. They're bound to do you if they get the chance. Isn't
+he married?"
+
+"Yes," said Mrs. Trent. "He married a deaf heiress."
+
+"Intelligent of him!" remarked Mrs. Wolfstein. "I always wish I'd
+married a blind millionaire instead of Henry. Being a Jew, Henry sees
+not only all there is to see, but all there isn't. Sir Donald and his
+Cupid son don't seem to have much to say to one another."
+
+"Oh, don't you know that family affection's the dumbest thing on earth?"
+said Mrs. Trent.
+
+"Too deep for speech," said Lady Manby. "I love to see fathers and sons
+together, the fathers trying to look younger than they are and the sons
+older. It's the most comic relationship, and breeds shyness as the West
+African climate breeds fever."
+
+"I know the whole of the West African coast by heart," declared Miss
+Burns, wagging her head, and moving her brown hands nervously among her
+knives and forks. "And I never caught anything there."
+
+"Not even a husband," murmured Mrs. Wolfstein to Lady Manby.
+
+"In fact, I never felt better in my life than I did at Old Calabar,"
+continued Miss Burns. "But there my mind was occupied. I was studying
+the habits of alligators."
+
+"They're very bad, aren't they?" asked Lady Manby, in a tone of earnest
+inquiry.
+
+"I prefer to study the habits of men," said Sally Perceval, who was
+always surrounded by a troup of young racing men and athletes, who
+admired her swimming feats.
+
+"Men are very disappointing, I think," observed Mrs. Trent. "They are
+like a lot of beads all threaded on one string."
+
+"And what's the string?" asked Sally Perceval.
+
+"Vanity. Men are far vainer than we are. Their indifference to the
+little arts we practise shows it. A woman whose head is bald covers it
+with a wig. Without a wig she would feel that she was an outcast totally
+powerless to attract. But a bald-headed man has no idea of diffidence.
+He does not bother about a wig because he expects to be adored without
+one."
+
+"And the worst of it is that he is adored," said Mrs. Wolfstein. "Look
+at my passion for Henry."
+
+They began to talk about their husbands. Lady Holme did not join in. She
+and Pimpernel Schley were very silent members of the party. Even Miss
+Burns, who was--so she said--a spinster by conviction not by
+necessity, plunged into the husband question, and gave some very daring
+illustrations of the marriage customs of certain heathen tribes.
+
+Pimpernel Schley hardly spoke at all. When someone, turning to her,
+asked her what she thought about the subject under discussion, she
+lifted her pale eyes and said, with the choir-boy drawl:
+
+"I've got no husband and never had one, so I guess I'm no kind of a
+judge."
+
+"I guess she's a judge of other women's husbands, though," said Mrs.
+Wolfstein to Lady Cardington. "That child is going to devastate London."
+
+Now and then Lady Holme glanced towards Sir Donald and his son. They
+seemed as untalkative as she was. Sir Donald kept on looking towards
+Mrs. Wolfstein's table. So did Leo. But whereas Leo Ulford's eyes were
+fixed on Pimpernel Schley, Sir Donald's met the eyes of Lady Holme. She
+felt annoyed; not because Sir Donald was looking at her, but because his
+son was not.
+
+How these women talked about their husbands! Lady Cardington, who was
+a widow, spoke of husbands as if they were a race which was gradually
+dying out. She thought the modern woman was beginning to get a little
+tired of the institution of matrimony, and to care much less for men
+than was formerly the case. Being contradicted by Mrs. Trent, she gave
+her reasons for this belief. One was that whereas American matinee girls
+used to go mad over the "leading men" of the stage they now went mad
+over the leading women. She also instanced the many beautiful London
+women, universally admired, who were over thirty and still remained
+spinsters. Mrs. Trent declared that they were abnormal, and that, till
+the end of time, women would always wish to be wives. Mrs. Wolfstein
+agreed with her on various grounds. One was that it was the instinct
+of woman to buy and to rule, and that if she were rich she could
+now acquire a husband as, in former days, people acquired slaves--by
+purchase. This remark led to the old question of American heiresses and
+the English nobility, and to a prolonged discussion as to whether or not
+most women ruled their husbands.
+
+Women nearly always argue from personal experience, and consequently
+Lady Cardington--whose husband had treated her badly--differed on this
+point from Mrs. Wolfstein, who always did precisely what she pleased,
+regardless of Mr. Wolfstein's wishes. Mrs. Trent affirmed that for her
+part she thought women should treat their husbands as they treated their
+servants, and dismiss them if they didn't behave themselves, without
+giving them a character. She had done so twice, and would do it a
+third time if the occasion arose. Sally Perceval attacked her for this,
+pleading slangily that men would be men, and that their failings
+ought to be winked at; and Miss Burns, as usual, brought the marital
+proceedings of African savages upon the carpet. Lady Manby turned the
+whole thing into a joke by a farcical description of the Private Enquiry
+proceedings of a jealous woman of her acquaintance, who had donned a
+canary-coloured wig as a disguise, and dogged her husband's footsteps
+in the streets of London, only to find that he went out at odd times to
+visit a grandmother from whom he had expectations, and who happened to
+live in St. John's Wood.
+
+The foreign waiters, who moved round the table handing the dishes,
+occasionally exchanged furtive glances which seemed indicative of
+suppressed amusement, and the men who were lunching near, many of whom
+were now smoking cigarettes, became more and more intent upon Mrs.
+Wolfstein and her guests. As they were getting up to go into the Palm
+Court for coffee and liqueurs, Lady Cardington again referred to the
+article on the proposed school for happiness, which had apparently made
+a deep impression upon her.
+
+"I wonder if happiness can be taught," she said. "If it can--"
+
+"It can't," said Mrs. Trent, with more than her usual sledge-hammer
+bluntness. "We aren't meant to be happy here."
+
+"Who doesn't mean us to be happy?" asked poor Lady Cardington in a
+deplorable voice.
+
+"First--our husbands."
+
+"It's cowardly not to be happy," cried Miss Burns, pushing her hat over
+her left eye as a tribute to the close of lunch. "In a savage state
+you'll always find--"
+
+The remainder of her remark was lost in the _frou-frou_ of skirts as the
+eight women began slowly to thread their way between the tables to the
+door.
+
+Lady Holme found herself immediately behind Miss Schley, who moved with
+impressive deliberation and the extreme composure of a well-brought-up
+child thoroughly accustomed to being shown off to visitors. Her
+straw-coloured hair was done low in the nape of her snowy neck, and,
+as she took her little steps, her white skirt trailed over the carpet
+behind her with a sort of virginal slyness. As she passed Leo Ulford it
+brushed gently against him, and he drummed the large fingers of his left
+hand with sudden violence on the tablecloth, at the same time pursing
+his chubby lips and then opening his mouth as if he were going to say
+something.
+
+Sir Donald rose and bowed. Mrs. Wolfstein murmured a word to him in
+passing, and they had not been sipping their coffee for more than two or
+three minutes before he joined them with his son.
+
+Sir Donald came up at once to Lady Holme.
+
+"May I present my son to you, Lady Holme?" he said.
+
+"Certainly."
+
+"Leo, I wish to introduce you to Lady Holme."
+
+Leo Ulford bowed rather ungracefully. Standing up he looked more than
+ever like a huge boy, and he had much of the expression that is often
+characteristic of huge boys--an expression in which impudence seems to
+float forward from a background of surliness.
+
+Lady Holme said nothing. Leo Ulford sat down beside her in an armchair.
+
+"Better weather," he remarked.
+
+Then he called a waiter, and said to him, in a hectoring voice:
+
+"Bring me a Kummel and make haste about it."
+
+He lit a cigarette that was almost as big as a cigar, and turned again
+to Lady Holme.
+
+"I've been in the Sahara gazelle shooting," he continued.
+
+He spoke in a rather thick, lumbering voice and very loud, probably
+because he was married to a deaf woman.
+
+"Just come back," he added.
+
+"Oh!" said Lady Holme.
+
+She was sitting perfectly upright on her chair, and noticed that her
+companion's eyes travelled calmly and critically over her figure with
+an unveiled deliberation that was exceptionally brazen even in a modern
+London man. Lady Holme did not mind it. Indeed, she rather liked it. She
+knew at once, by that look, the type of man with whom she had to deal.
+In Leo Ulford there was something of Lord Holme, as in Pimpernel Schley
+there was perhaps a touch of herself. Having finished his stare, Leo
+Ulford continued:
+
+"Jolly out there. No rot. Do as you like and no one to bother you.
+Gazelle are awfully shy beasts though."
+
+"They must have suited you," said Lady Holme, very gravely.
+
+"Why?" he asked, taking the glass of Kummel which the waiter had brought
+and setting it down on a table by him.
+
+"Aren't you a shy--er--beast?"
+
+He stared at her calmly for a moment, and then said:
+
+"I say, you're too sharp, Lady Holme."
+
+He turned his head towards Pimpernel Schley, who was sitting a little
+way off with her soft, white chin tucked well in, looking steadily down
+into a cup half full of Turkish coffee and speaking to nobody.
+
+"Who's that girl?" he asked.
+
+"That's Miss Pimpernel Schley. A pretty name, isn't it?"
+
+"Is it? An American of course."
+
+"Of course."
+
+"What cheek they have? What's she do?"
+
+"I believe she acts in--well, a certain sort of plays."
+
+A slow smile overspread Leo Ulford's face and made him look more like a
+huge boy than ever.
+
+"What certain sort?" he asked. "The sort I'd like?"
+
+"Very probably. But I know nothing of your tastes."
+
+She did--everything almost. There are a good many Leo Ulfords lounging
+about London.
+
+"I like anything that's a bit lively, with no puritanic humbug about
+it."
+
+"Well, you surely can't suppose that there can be any puritanic humbug
+about Miss Schley or anything she has to do with!"
+
+He glanced again at Pimpernel Schley and then at Lady Holme. The smile
+on his face became a grin. Then his huge shoulders began to shake
+gently.
+
+"I do love talking to women," he said, on the tide of a prolonged
+chuckle. "When they aren't deaf."
+
+Lady Holme still remained perfectly grave.
+
+"Do you? Why?" she inquired.
+
+"Can't you guess why?"
+
+"Our charity to our sister women?"
+
+She was smiling now.
+
+"You teach me such a lot," he said.
+
+He drank his Kummel.
+
+"I always learn something when I talk to a woman. I've learnt something
+from you."
+
+Lady Holme did not ask him what it was. She saw that he was now more
+intent on her than he had been on Miss Schley, and she got up to go,
+feeling more cheerful than she had since she left the _atelier_ of
+"Cupido."
+
+"Don't go."
+
+"I must."
+
+"Already! May I come and call?"
+
+"Your father knows my address."
+
+"Oh, I say--but--"
+
+"You're not going already!" cried Mrs. Wolfstein, who was having a
+second glass of Benedictine and beginning to talk rather outrageously
+and with a more than usually pronounced foreign accent.
+
+"I must, really."
+
+"I'm afraid my son has bored you," murmured Sir Donald, in his worn-out
+voice.
+
+"No, I like him," she replied, loud enough for Leo to hear.
+
+Sir Donald did not look particularly gratified at this praise of his
+achievement. Lady Holme took an airy leave of everybody. When she came
+to Pimpernel Schley she said:
+
+"I wish you a great success, Miss Schley."
+
+"Many thanks," drawled the vestal virgin, who was still looking into her
+coffee cup.
+
+"I must come to your first night. Have you ever acted in London?"
+
+"Never."
+
+"You won't be nervous?"
+
+"Nervous! Don't know the word."
+
+She bent to sip her coffee.
+
+When Lady Holme reached the door of the Carlton, and was just entering
+one of the revolving cells to gain the pavement, she heard Lady
+Cardington's low voice behind her.
+
+"Let me drive you home, dear."
+
+At the moment she felt inclined to be alone. She had even just refused
+Sir Donald's earnest request to accompany her to her carriage. Had any
+other woman made her this offer she would certainly have refused it. But
+few people refused any request of Lady Cardington's. Lady Holme, like
+the rest of the world, felt the powerful influence that lay in her
+gentleness as a nerve lies in a body. And then had she not wept when
+Lady Holme sang a tender song to her? In a moment they were driving up
+the Haymarket together in Lady Cardington's barouche.
+
+The weather had grown brighter. Wavering gleams of light broke through
+the clouds and lay across the city, giving a peculiarly unctuous look to
+the slimy streets, in which there were a good many pedestrians more
+or less splashed with mud. There was a certain hopefulness in the
+atmosphere, and yet a pathos such as there always is in Spring, when it
+walks through London ways, bearing itself half nervously, like a country
+cousin.
+
+"I don't like this time of year," said Lady Cardington.
+
+She was leaning back and glancing anxiously about her.
+
+"But why not?" asked Lady Holme. "What's the matter with it?"
+
+"Youth."
+
+"But surely--"
+
+"The year's too young. And at my age one feels very often as if the
+advantage of youth were an unfair advantage."
+
+"Dare I ask--?"
+
+She checked herself, looking at her companion's snow-white hair, which
+was arranged in such a way that it looked immensely thick under the big
+black hat she wore--a hat half grandmotherly and half coquettish, that
+certainly suited her to perfection.
+
+"Spring--" she was beginning rather quickly; but Lady Cardington
+interrupted her.
+
+"Fifty-eight," she said.
+
+She laughed anxiously and looked at Lady Holme.
+
+"Didn't you think I was older?"
+
+"I don't know that I ever thought about it," replied Lady Holme, with
+the rather careless frankness she often used towards women.
+
+"Of course not. Why should you, or anyone? When a woman's once
+over fifty it really doesn't matter much whether she's fifty-one or
+seventy-one. Does it?"
+
+Lady Holme thought for a moment. Then she said:
+
+"I really don't know. You see, I'm not a man."
+
+Lady Cardington's forehead puckered and her mouth drooped piteously.
+
+"A woman's real life is very short," she said. "But her desire for real
+life can last very long--her silly, useless desire."
+
+"But if her looks remain?"
+
+"They don't."
+
+"You think it is a question of looks?"
+
+"Do you think it is?" asked Lady Cardington. "But how can you know
+anything about it, at your age, and with your appearance?"
+
+"I suppose we all have our different opinions as to what men are and
+what men want," Lady Holme said, more thoughtfully than usual.
+
+"Men! Men!" Lady Cardington exclaimed, with a touch of irritation
+unusual in her. "Why should we women do, and be, everything for men?"
+
+"I don't know, but we do and we are. There are some men, though, who
+think it isn't a question of looks, or think they think so."
+
+"Who?" said Lady Cardington, quickly.
+
+"Oh, there are some," answered Lady Holme, evasively, "who believe in
+mental charm more than in physical charm, or say they do. And mental
+charm doesn't age so obviously as physical--as the body does, I suppose.
+Perhaps we ought to pin our faith to it. What do you think of Miss
+Schley?"
+
+Lady Cardington glanced at her with a kind of depressed curiosity.
+
+"She pins her faith to the other thing," she said.
+
+"Yes."
+
+"She's pretty. Do you know she reminds me faintly of you."
+
+Lady Holme felt acute irritation at this remark, but she only said:
+
+"Does she?"
+
+"Something in her colouring. I'm sure she's a man's woman, but I can't
+say I found her interesting."
+
+"Men's women seldom are interesting to us. They don't care to be," said
+Lady Holme.
+
+Suddenly she thought that possibly between Pimpernel Schley and herself
+there were resemblances unconnected with colouring.
+
+"I suppose not. But still--ah, here's Cadogan Square!"
+
+She kissed Lady Holme lightly on the cheek.
+
+"Fifty-eight!" Lady Holme said to herself as she went into the house.
+"Just think of being fifty-eight if one has been a man's woman! Perhaps
+it's better after all to be an everybody's woman. Well, but how's it
+done?"
+
+She looked quite puzzled as she came into the drawing-room, where Robin
+Pierce had been waiting impatiently for twenty minutes.
+
+"Robin," she said seriously, "I'm very unhappy."
+
+"Not so unhappy as I have been for the last half hour," he said, taking
+her hand and holding it. "What is it?"
+
+"I'm dreadfully afraid I'm a man's woman. Do you think I am?"
+
+He could not help smiling as he looked into her solemn eyes.
+
+"I do indeed. Why should you be upset about it?"
+
+"I don't know. Lady Cardington's been saying things--and I met a rather
+abominable little person at lunch, a little person like a baby that's
+been about a great deal in a former state, and altogether--Let's have
+tea."
+
+"By all means."
+
+"And now soothe me, Robin. I'm dreadfully strung up. Soothe me. Tell
+me, I'm an everybody's woman and that I shall never be _de trop_ in the
+world--not even when I'm fifty-eight."
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+THE success of Pimpernel Schley in London was great and immediate, and
+preceded her appearance upon the stage. To some people, who thought they
+knew their London, it was inexplicable. Miss Schley was pretty and knew
+how to dress. These facts, though of course denied by some, as all facts
+in London are, were undeniable. But Miss Schley had nothing to say. She
+was not a brilliant talker, as so many of her countrywomen are. She
+was not vivacious in manner, except on rare occasions. She was not
+interested in all the questions of the day. She was not--a great many
+things. But she was one thing.
+
+She was exquisitely sly.
+
+Her slyness was definite and pervasive. In her it took the place of wit.
+It took the place of culture. It even took the place of vivacity. It was
+a sort of maid-of-all-work in her personality and never seemed to tire.
+The odd thing was that it did not seem to tire others. They found it
+permanently piquant. Men said of Miss Schley, "She's a devilish clever
+little thing. She don't say much, but she's up to every move on the
+board." Women were impressed by her. There was something in her supreme
+and snowy composure that suggested inflexible will. Nothing ever put her
+out or made her look as if she were in a false position.
+
+London was captivated by the abnormal combination of snow and slyness
+which she presented to it, and began at once to make much of her.
+
+At one time the English were supposed to be cold; and rather gloried in
+the supposition. But recently a change has taken place in the national
+character--at any rate as exhibited in London. Rigidity has gone out
+of fashion. It is condemned as insular, and unless you are cosmopolitan
+nowadays you are nothing, or worse than nothing. The smart Englishwoman
+is beginning to be almost as restless as a Neapolitan. She is in
+a continual flutter of movement, as if her body were threaded with
+trembling wires. She uses a great deal of gesture. She is noisy about
+nothing. She is vivacious at all costs, and would rather suggest
+hysteria than British phlegm.
+
+Miss Schley's calm was therefore in no danger of being drowned in any
+pervasive calm about her. On the contrary, it stood out. It became
+very individual. Her composed speechlessness in the midst of uneasy
+chatter--the Englishwoman is seldom really self-possessed--carried with
+it a certain dignity which took the place of breeding. She was always
+at her ease, and to be always at your ease makes a deep impression upon
+London, which is full of self-consciousness.
+
+She began to be the fashion at once. A great lady, who had a passion for
+supplying smart men with what they wanted, saw that they were going to
+want Miss Schley and promptly took her up. Other women followed suit.
+Miss Schley had a double triumph. She was run after by women as well
+as by men. She got her little foot in everywhere, and in no time. Her
+personal character was not notoriously bad. The slyness had taken care
+of that. But even if it had been, if only the papers had not been too
+busy in the matter, she might have had success. Some people do whose
+names have figured upon the evening bills exposed at the street corners.
+Hers had not and was not likely to. It was her art to look deliberately
+pure and good, and to suggest, in a way almost indefinable and very
+perpetual, that she could be anything and everything, and perhaps
+had been, under the perfumed shadow of the rose. The fact that the
+suggestion seemed to be conveyed with intention was the thing that took
+corrupt old London's fancy and made Miss Schley a pet.
+
+Her name of Pimpernel was not against her.
+
+Men liked it for its innocence, and laughed as they mentioned it in the
+clubs, as who should say:
+
+"We know the sort of Pimpernel we mean."
+
+Miss Schley's social success brought her into Lady Holme's set, and
+people noticed, what Lady Holme had been the first to notice, the faint
+likeness between them. Lady Holme was not exquisitely sly. Her voice was
+not like a choir-boy's; her manner was not like the manner of an image;
+her eyes were not for ever cast down. Even her characteristic silence
+was far less perpetual than the equally characteristic silence of Miss
+Schley. But men said they were the same colour. What men said women
+began to think, and it was not an assertion wholly without foundation.
+At a little distance there was an odd resemblance in the one white face
+and fair hair to the other. Miss Schley's way of moving, too, had a sort
+of reference to Lady Holme's individual walk. There were several things
+characteristic of Lady Holme which Miss Schley seemed to reproduce, as
+it were, with a sly exaggeration. Her hair was similar, but paler, her
+whiteness more dead, her silence more perpetual, her composure more
+enigmatically serene, her gait slower, with diminished steps.
+
+It was all a little like an imitation, with just a touch of caricature
+added.
+
+One or two friends remarked upon it to Lady Holme, who heard them very
+airily.
+
+"Are we alike?" she said. "I daresay, but you mustn't expect me to see
+it. One never knows the sort of impression one produces on the world.
+I think Miss Schley a very attractive little creature, and as to her
+social gifts, I bow to them."
+
+"But she has none," cried Mrs. Wolfstein, who was one of those who had
+drawn Lady Holme's attention to the likeness.
+
+"How can you say so? Everyone is at her feet."
+
+"Her feet, perhaps. They are lovely. But she has no gifts. That's why
+she gets on. Gifted people are a drug in the market. London's sick of
+them. They worry. Pimpernel's found that out and gone in for the savage
+state. I mean mentally of course."
+
+"Her mind dwells in a wigwam," said Lady Manby. "And wears glass beads
+and little bits of coloured cloth."
+
+"But her acting?" asked Lady Holme, with careless indifference.
+
+"Oh, that's improper but not brilliant," said Mrs. Wolfstein. "The
+American critics says it's beneath contempt."
+
+"But not beneath popularity, I suppose?" said Lady Holme.
+
+"No, she's enormously popular. Newspaper notices don't matter to
+Pimpernel. Are you going to ask her to your house? You might. She's
+longing to come. Everybody else has, and she knew you first."
+
+Lady Holme began to realise why she could never like Mrs. Wolfstein. The
+latter would try to manage other people's affairs.
+
+"I had no idea she would care about it," she answered, rather coldly.
+
+"My dear--an American! And your house! You're absurdly modest. She's
+simply pining to come. May I tell her to?"
+
+"I should prefer to invite her myself," said Lady Holme, with a distinct
+touch of hauteur which made Mrs. Wolfstein smile maliciously.
+
+When Lady Holme was alone she realised that she had, half unconsciously,
+meant that Miss Schley should find that there was at any rate one house
+in London whose door did not at once fly open to welcome her demure
+presence. But now? She certainly did not intend to be a marked exception
+to a rule that was apparently very general. If people were going to talk
+about her exclusion of Miss Schley, she would certainly not exclude
+her. She asked herself why she wished to, and said to herself that Miss
+Schley's slyness bored her. But she knew that the real reason of the
+secret hostility she felt towards the American was the fact of their
+resemblance to each other. Until Miss Schley appeared in London
+she--Viola Holme--had been original both in her beauty and in her manner
+of presenting it to the world. Miss Schley was turning her into a type.
+
+It was too bad. Any woman would have disliked it.
+
+She wondered whether Miss Schley recognised the likeness. But of course
+people had spoken to her about it. Mrs. Wolfstein was her bosom friend.
+The Jewess had met her first at Carlsbad and, with that terrible social
+flair which often dwells in Israel, had at once realised her fitness for
+a London success and resolved to "get her over." Women of the Wolfstein
+species are seldom jealously timorous of the triumphs of other women.
+A certain coarse cleverness, a certain ingrained assurance and
+unconquerable self-confidence keeps them hardy. And they generally have
+a noble reliance on the power of the tongue. Being incapable of any
+fear of Miss Schley, Mrs. Wolfstein, ever on the look-out for means of
+improving her already satisfactory position in the London world, saw
+one in the vestal virgin and resolved to launch her in England. She was
+delighted with the result. Miss Schley had already added several very
+desirable people to the Wolfstein visiting-list. In return "Henry" had
+"put her on to" one or two very good things in the City. Everything
+would be most satisfactory if only Lady Holme were not tiresome about
+the Cadogan Square door.
+
+"She hates you, Pimpernel," said Mrs. Wolfstein to her friend.
+
+"Why?" drawled Miss Schley.
+
+"You know why perfectly well. You reproduce her looks. I'm perfectly
+certain she's dreading your first night. She's afraid people will begin
+to think that extraordinary colourless charm she and you possess stagey.
+Besides, you have certain mannerisms--you don't imitate her, Pimpernel?"
+
+The pawnbroking expression was remarkably apparent for a moment in Mrs.
+Wolfstein's eyes.
+
+"I haven't started to yet."
+
+"Yet?"
+
+"Well, if she don't ask me to number thirty-eight--'tis thirty-eight?"
+
+"Forty-two."
+
+"Forty-two Cadogan Square, I might be tempted. I came out as a mimic,
+you know, at Corsher and Byall's in Philadelphia."
+
+Miss Schley gazed reflectively upon the brown carpet of Mrs. Wolfstein's
+boudoir.
+
+"Folks said I wasn't bad," she added meditatively.
+
+"I think I ought to warn Viola," said Mrs. Wolfstein.
+
+She was peculiarly intimate with people of distinction when they weren't
+there. Miss Schley looked as if she had not heard. She often did when
+anything of importance to her was said. It was important to her to be
+admitted to Lady Holme's house. Everybody went there. It was one of the
+very smartest houses in London, and since everybody knew that she had
+been introduced to Lady Holme, since half the world was comparing their
+faces and would soon begin to compare their mannerisms--well, it
+would be better that she should not be forced into any revival of her
+Philadelphia talents.
+
+Mrs. Wolfstein did not warn Lady Holme. She was far too fond of being
+amused to do anything so short-sighted. Indeed, from that moment she was
+inclined to conspire to keep the Cadogan Square door shut against her
+friend. She did not go so far as that; for she had a firm faith in
+Pimpernel's cuteness and was aware that she would be found out. But she
+remained passive and kept her eyes wide open.
+
+Miss Schley was only going to act for a month in London. Her managers
+had taken a theatre for her from the first of June till the first of
+July. As she was to appear in a play she had already acted in all over
+the States, and as her American company was coming over to support her,
+she had nothing to do in the way of preparation. Having arrived early
+in the year, she had nearly three months of idleness to enjoy. Her
+conversation with Mrs. Wolfstein took place in the latter days of March.
+And it was just at this period that Lady Holme began seriously to debate
+whether she should, or should not, open her door to the American. She
+knew Miss Schley was determined to come to her house. She knew her
+house was one of those to which any woman setting out on the conquest of
+London would wish to come. She did not want Miss Schley there, but she
+resolved to invite her if peopled talked too much about her not being
+invited. And she wished to be informed if they did. One day she spoke to
+Robin Pierce about it. Lord Holme's treatment of Carey had not yet been
+applied to him. They met at a private view in Bond Street, given by a
+painter who was adored by the smart world, and, as yet, totally unknown
+in every other circle. The exhibition was of portraits of beautiful
+women, and all the beautiful women and their admirers crowded the rooms.
+Both Lady Holme and Miss Schley had been included among the sitters of
+the painter, and--was it by chance or design?--their portraits hung side
+by side upon the brown-paper-covered walls. Lady Holme was not aware of
+this when she caught Robin's eye through a crevice in the picture hats
+and called him to her with a little nod.
+
+"Is there tea?"
+
+"Yes. In the last room."
+
+"Take me there. Oh, there's Ashley Greaves. Avoid him, like a dear, till
+I've looked at something."
+
+Ashley Greaves was the painter. There was nothing of the Bohemian about
+him. He looked like a heavy cavalry officer as he stood in the centre of
+the room talking to a small, sharp-featured old lady in a poke bonnet.
+
+"He's safe. Lady Blower's got hold of him."
+
+"Poor wretch! She ought to have a keeper. Strong tea, Robin."
+
+They found a settee in a corner walled in by the backs of tea-drinking
+beauties.
+
+"I want to ask you something," said Lady Holme, confidentially. "You go
+about and hear what they're saying."
+
+"And greater nonsense it seems each new season."
+
+"Nonsense keeps us alive."
+
+"Is it the oxygen self-administered by an almost moribund society?"
+
+"It's the perfume that prevents us from noticing the stuffiness of the
+room. But, Robin, tell me--what is the nonsense of now?"
+
+"Religious, political, theatrical, divorce court or what, Lady Holme?"
+
+He looked at her with a touch of mischief in his dark face, which
+told her, and was meant to tell her, that he was on the alert, and had
+divined that she had a purpose in thus pleasantly taking possession of
+him.
+
+"Oh, the people--nonsense. You know perfectly what I mean."
+
+"Whom are they chattering about most at the moment? You'll be
+contemptuous if I tell you."
+
+"It's a woman, then?"
+
+"When isn't it?"
+
+"Do I know her?"
+
+"Slightly."
+
+"Well?"
+
+"Miss Schley."
+
+"Really?"
+
+Lady Holme's voice sounded perfectly indifferent and just faintly
+surprised. There was no hint of irritation in it.
+
+"And what are they saying about Miss Schley?" she added, sipping her tea
+and glancing about the crowded room.
+
+"Oh, many things, and among the many one that's more untrue than all the
+rest put together."
+
+"What's that?"
+
+"It's too absurd. I don't think I'll tell you."
+
+"But why not? If it's too absurd it's sure to be amusing."
+
+"I don't think so."
+
+His voice sounded almost angry.
+
+"Tell me, Robin."
+
+He looked at her quickly with a warm light in his dark eyes.
+
+"If you only knew how I--"
+
+"Hush! Go on about Miss Schley."
+
+"They're saying that she's wonderfully like you, and that--have some
+more tea?"
+
+"That--?"
+
+"That you hate it."
+
+Lady Holme smiled, as if she were very much entertained.
+
+"But why should I hate it?"
+
+"I don't know. But women invent reasons for everything."
+
+"What have they invented for this?"
+
+"Oh--well--that you like to--I can't tell you it all, really. But in
+substance it comes to this! They are saying, or implying--"
+
+"Implication is the most subtle of the social arts."
+
+"It's the meanest--implying that all that's natural to you, that sets
+you apart from others, is an assumption to make you stand out from the
+rest of the crowd, and that you hate Miss Schley because she happens
+to have assumed some of the same characteristics, and so makes you seem
+less unique than you did before."
+
+Lady Holme said nothing for a moment. Then she remarked:
+
+"I'm sure no woman said 'less unique.'"
+
+"Why not?"
+
+"Now did anyone? Confess!"
+
+"What d'you suppose they did say?"
+
+"More commonplace."
+
+He could not help laughing.
+
+"As if you were ever commonplace!" he exclaimed, rather relieved by her
+manner.
+
+"That's not the question. But then Miss Schley's said to be like me not
+only in appearance but in other ways? Are we really so Siamese?"
+
+"I can't see the faintest beginning of a resemblance."
+
+"Ah, now you're falling into exaggeration in the other direction."
+
+"Well, not in realities. Perhaps in one or two trifling mannerisms--I
+believe she imitates you deliberately."
+
+"I think I must ask her to the house."
+
+"Why should you?"
+
+"Well, perhaps you might tell me."
+
+"I don't understand."
+
+"Aren't people saying that the reason I don't ask her is because I am
+piqued at the supposed resemblance between us?"
+
+"Oh, people will say anything. If we are to model our lives according to
+their ridiculous ideas--"
+
+"Well, but we do."
+
+"Unless we follow the dictates of our own natures, our own souls."
+
+He lowered his voice almost to a whisper.
+
+"Be yourself, be the woman who sings, and no one--not even a fool--will
+ever say again that you resemble a nonentity like Miss Schley. You
+see--you see now that even socially it is a mistake not to be your
+real self. You can be imitated by a cute little Yankee who has neither
+imagination nor brains, only the sort of slyness that is born out of the
+gutter."
+
+"My dear Robin, remember where we are. You--a diplomatist!"
+
+She put her finger to her lips and got up.
+
+"We must look at something or Ashley Greaves will be furious."
+
+They made their way into the galleries, which were almost impassable. In
+the distance Lady Holme caught sight of Miss Schley with Mrs. Wolfstein.
+They were surrounded by young men. She looked hard at the American's
+pale face, saying to herself, "Is that like me? Is that like me?" Her
+conversation with Robin Pierce had made her feel excited. She had
+not shown it. She had seemed, indeed, almost oddly indifferent. But
+something combative was awake within her. She wondered whether the
+American was consciously imitating her. What an impertinence! But Miss
+Schley was impertinence personified. Her impertinence was her _raison
+d'etre_. Without it she would almost cease to be. She would at any rate
+be as nothing.
+
+Followed by Robin, Lady Holme made her way slowly towards the Jewess and
+the American.
+
+They were now standing together before the pictures, and had been joined
+by Ashley Greaves, who was beginning to look very warm and expressive,
+despite his cavalry moustache. Their backs were towards the room, and
+Lady Holme and Robin drew near to them without being perceived. Mrs.
+Wolfstein had a loud voice and did not control it in a crowd. On the
+contrary, she generally raised it, as if she wished to be heard by those
+whom she was not addressing.
+
+"Sargent invariably brings out the secret of his sitters," she was
+saying to Ashley Greaves as Lady Holme and Robin came near and stood
+for an instant wedged in by people, unable to move forward or backward.
+"You've brought out the similarities between Pimpernel and Lady Holme.
+I never saw anything so clever. You show us not only what we all saw but
+what we all passed over though it was there to see. There is an absurd
+likeness, and you've blazoned it."
+
+Robin stole a glance at his companion. Ashley Greaves said, in a thin
+voice that did not accord with his physique:
+
+"My idea was to indicate the strong link there is between the English
+woman and the American woman. If I may say so, these two portraits, as
+it were, personify the two countries, and--er--and--er--"
+
+His mind appeared to give way. He strove to continue, to say something
+memorable, conscious of his conspicuous and central position. But his
+intellect, possibly over-heated and suffering from lack of air, declined
+to back him up, and left him murmuring rather hopelessly:
+
+"The one nation--er--and the other--yes--the give and take--the give and
+take. You see my meaning? Yes, yes."
+
+Miss Schley said nothing. She looked at Lady Holme's portrait and
+at hers with serenity, and seemed quite unconscious of the many eyes
+fastened upon her.
+
+"You feel the strong link, I hope, Pimpernel?" said Mrs. Wolfstein, with
+her most violent foreign accent. "Hands across the Herring Pond!"
+
+"Mr. Greaves has been too cute for words," she replied. "I wish Lady
+Holme could cast her eye on them."
+
+She looked up at nothing, with a sudden air of seeing something
+interesting that was happening along way off.
+
+"Philadelphia!" murmured Mrs. Wolfstein, with an undercurrent of
+laughter.
+
+It was very like Lady Holme's look when she was singing. Robin Pierce
+saw it and pressed his lips together. At this moment the crowd shifted
+and left a gap through which Lady Holme immediately glided towards
+Ashley Greaves. He saw her and came forward to meet her with eagerness,
+holding out his hand, and smiling mechanically with even more than his
+usual intention.
+
+"What a success!" she said.
+
+"If it is, your portrait makes it so."
+
+"And where is my portrait?"
+
+Robin Pierce nipped in the bud a rather cynical smile. The painter wiped
+his forehead with a white silk handkerchief.
+
+"Can't you guess? Look where the crowd is thickest."
+
+The people had again closed densely round the two pictures.
+
+"You are an artist in more ways than one, I'm afraid," said Lady Holme.
+"Don't turn my head more than the heat has."
+
+The searching expression, that indicated the strong desire to say
+something memorable, once more contorted the painter's face.
+
+"He who would essay to fix beauty on canvas," he began, in a rather
+piercing voice, "should combine two gifts."
+
+He paused and lifted his upper lip two or three times, employing his
+under-jaw as a lever.
+
+"Yes?" said Lady Holme, encouragingly.
+
+"The gift of the brush which perpetuates and the gift of--er--gift of
+the--"
+
+His intellect once more retreated from him into some distant place and
+left him murmuring:
+
+"Beauty demands all, beauty demands all. Yes, yes! Sacrifice! Sacrifice!
+Isn't it so?"
+
+He tugged at his large moustache, with an abrupt assumption of the
+cavalry officer's manner, which he doubtless deemed to be in accordance
+with his momentary muddle-headedness.
+
+"And you give it what it wants most--the touch of the ideal. It blesses
+you. Can we get through?"
+
+She had glanced at Robin while she spoke the first words. Ashley
+Greaves, with an expression of sudden relief, began very politely to
+hustle the crowd, which yielded to his persuasive shoulders, and Lady
+Holme found herself within looking distance of the two portraits, and
+speaking distance of Mrs. Wolfstein and Miss Schley. She greeted them
+with a nod that was more gay and friendly than her usual salutations to
+women, which often lacked _bonhomie_. Mrs. Wolfstein's too expressive
+face lit up.
+
+"The sensation is complete!" she exclaimed loudly.
+
+"Hope you're well," murmured Miss Schley, letting her pale eyes rest on
+Lady Holme for about a quarter of a second, and then becoming acutely
+attentive to vacancy.
+
+Lady Holme was now in front of the pictures. She looked at Miss Schley's
+portrait with apparent interest, while Mrs. Wolfstein looked at her with
+an interest that was maliciously real.
+
+"Well?" said Mrs. Wolfstein. "Well?"
+
+"There's an extraordinary resemblance!" said Lady Holme. "It's
+wonderfully like."
+
+"Even you see it! Ashley, you ought to be triumphant--"
+
+"Wonderfully like--Miss Schley," added Lady Holme, cutting gently
+through Mrs. Wolfstein's rather noisy outburst.
+
+She turned to the American.
+
+"I have been wondering whether you won't come in one day and see my
+little home. Everyone wants you, I know, but if you have a minute some
+Wednesday--"
+
+"I'll be delighted."
+
+"Next Wednesday, then?"
+
+"Thanks. Next Wednesday."
+
+"Cadogan Square--the red book will tell you. But I'll send cards. I must
+be running away now."
+
+When she had gone, followed by Robin, Mrs. Wolfstein said to Miss
+Schley:
+
+"She's been conquered by fear of Philadelphia."
+
+"Wait till I give her Noo York," returned the American, placidly.
+
+It seemed that Lady Holme's secret hostility to Miss Schley was returned
+by the vestal virgin.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII
+
+LORD HOLME seldom went to parties and never to private views. He thought
+such things "all damned rot." Few functions connected with the
+arts appealed to his frankly Philistine spirit, which rejoiced in
+celebrations linked with the glories of the body; boxing and wrestling
+matches, acrobatic performances, weight-lifting exhibitions, and so
+forth. He regretted that bear-baiting and cock-fighting were no longer
+legal in England, and had, on two occasions, travelled from London to
+South America solely in order to witness prize fights.
+
+As he so seldom put in an appearance at smart gatherings he had not
+yet encountered Miss Schley, nor had he heard a whisper of her
+much-talked-of resemblance to his wife. Her name was known to him as
+that of a woman whom one or two of his "pals" began to call a "deuced
+pretty girl" but his interest in her was not greatly awakened. The
+number of deuced pretty girls that had been in his life, and in the
+lives of his pals, was legion. They came and went like feathers dancing
+on the wind. The mere report of them, therefore, casual and drifting,
+could not excite his permanent attention, or fix their names and the
+record of their charms in his somewhat treacherous memory. Lady Holme
+had not once mentioned the American to him. She was a woman who knew how
+to be silent, and sometimes she was silent by instinct without saying to
+herself why.
+
+Lord Holme never appeared on her Wednesdays; and, indeed, those days
+were a rather uncertain factor among the London joys. If Lady Holme
+was to be found in her house at all, she was usually to be found on
+a Wednesday afternoon. She herself considered that she was at home on
+Wednesdays, but this idea of hers was often a mere delusion, especially
+when the season had fully set in. There were a thousand things to be
+done. She frequently forgot what the day of the week was. Unluckily she
+forgot it on the Wednesday succeeding her invitation to Miss Schley.
+The American duly turned up in Cadogan Square and was informed that Lady
+Holme was not to be seen. She left her card and drove away in her coupe
+with a decidedly stony expression upon her white face.
+
+That day it chanced that Lord Holme came in just before his wife
+and carelessly glanced over the cards which had been left during the
+afternoon. He was struck by the name of Pimpernel. It tickled his
+fancy somehow. As he looked at it he grinned. He looked at it again
+and vaguely recalled some shreds of the club gossip about Miss Schley's
+attractions. When Lady Holme walked quietly into her drawing-room two or
+three minutes later he met her with Miss Schley's card in his hand.
+
+"What have you got there, Fritz?" she said.
+
+He gave her the card.
+
+"You never told me you'd run up against her," he remarked.
+
+Lady Holme looked at the card and then, quickly, at her husband.
+
+"Why--do you know Miss Schley?" she asked.
+
+"Not I."
+
+"Well then?"
+
+"Fellows say she's deuced takin'. That's all. And she's got a fetchin'
+name--eh? Pimpernel."
+
+He repeated it twice and began to grin once more, and to bend and
+straighten his legs in the way which sometimes irritated his wife. Lady
+Holme was again looking at the card.
+
+"Surely it isn't Wednesday?" she said.
+
+"Yes, it is. What did you think it was?"
+
+"Tuesday--Monday--I don't know."
+
+"Where'd you meet her?"
+
+"Whom? Miss Schley? At the Carlton. A lunch of Amalia Wolfstein's."
+
+"Is she pretty?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+There was no hesitation before the reply.
+
+"What colour?
+
+"Oh!--not Albino."
+
+Lord Holme stared.
+
+"What d'you mean by that, girlie?"
+
+"That Miss Schley is remarkably fair--fairer than I am."
+
+"Is she as pretty as you?
+
+"You can find out for yourself. I'm going to ask her to
+something--presently."
+
+In the last word, in the pause that preceded it, there was the creeping
+sound of the reluctance Lady Holme felt in allowing Miss Schley to draw
+any closer to her life. Lord Holme did not notice it. He only said:
+
+"Right you are. Pimpernel--I should like to have a squint at her."
+
+"Very well. You shall."
+
+"Pimpernel," repeated Lord Holme, in a loud bass voice, as he lounged
+out of the room, grinning. The name tickled his fancy immensely. That
+was evident.
+
+Lady Holme fully intended to ask Miss Schley to the "something" already
+mentioned immediately. But somehow several days slipped by and it was
+difficult to find an unoccupied hour. The Holme cards had, of course,
+duly gone to the Carlton, but there the matter had ended, so far as Lady
+Holme was concerned. Miss Schley, however, was not so heedless as the
+woman she resembled. She began to return with some assiduity to the
+practice of the talent of the old Philadelphia days. In those days she
+used to do a "turn" in the course of which she imitated some of the
+popular public favourites of the States, and for each of her imitations
+she made up to resemble the person mimicked. She now concentrated
+this talent upon Lady Holme, but naturally the methods she employed in
+Society were far more subtle than those she had formerly used upon
+the stage. They were scarcely less effective. She slightly changed her
+fashion of doing her hair, puffing it out less at the sides, wearing
+it a little higher at the back. The change accentuated her physical
+resemblance to Lady Holme. She happened to get the name of the
+dressmaker who made most of the latter's gowns, and happened to give her
+an order that was executed with remarkable rapidity. But all this was
+only the foundation upon which she based, as it were, the structure of
+her delicate revenge.
+
+That consisted in a really admirable hint--it could not be called
+more--of Lady Holme's characteristic mannerisms.
+
+Lady Holme was not an affected woman, but, like all women of the world
+who are greatly admired and much talked about, she had certain little
+ways of looking, moving, speaking, being quiet, certain little habits
+of laughter, of gravity, that were her own property. Perhaps originally
+natural to her, they had become slightly accentuated as time went on,
+and many tongues and eyes admired them. That which had been unconscious
+had become conscious. The faraway look came a little more abruptly, went
+a little more reluctantly; than it had in the young girl's days. The
+wistful smile lingered more often on the lips of the twenties than on
+the lips of the teens. Few noticed any change, perhaps, but there had
+been a slight change, and it made things easier for Miss Schley.
+
+Her eye was observant although it was generally cast down. Society began
+to smile secretly at her talented exercises. Only a select few, like
+Mrs. Wolfstein, knew exactly what she was doing and why she was doing
+it, but the many were entertained, as children are, without analysing
+the cause of their amusement.
+
+Two people, however, were indignant--Robin Pierce and Rupert Carey.
+
+Robin Pierce, who had an instinct that was almost feminine in its
+subtlety, raged internally, and Rupert Carey, who, naturally acute, was
+always specially shrewd when his heart was in the game, openly showed
+his distaste for Miss Schley, and went about predicting her complete
+failure to capture the London public as an actress.
+
+"She's done it as a woman," someone replied to him.
+
+"Not the public, only the smart fools," returned Carey.
+
+"The smart fools have more influence on the public every day."
+
+Carey only snorted. He was in one of his evil moods that afternoon. He
+left the club in which the conversation had taken place, and, casting
+about for something to do, some momentary solace for his irritation and
+_ennui_, he bethought him of Sir Donald Ulford's invitation and resolved
+to make a call at the Albany. Sir Donald would be out, of course, but
+anyhow he would chance it and shoot a card.
+
+Sir Donald's servant said he was in. Carey was glad. Here was an hour
+filled up.
+
+With his usual hasty, decisive step he followed the man through a dark
+and Oriental-looking vestibule into a library, where Sir Donald was
+sitting at a bureau of teakwood, slowly writing upon a large, oblong
+sheet of foolscap with a very pointed pen.
+
+He got up, looking rather startled, and held out his hand.
+
+"I am glad to see you. I hoped you would come."
+
+"I'm disturbing a new poem," said Carey.
+
+Sir Donald's faded face acknowledged it.
+
+"Sorry. I'll go."
+
+"No, no. I have infinite leisure, and I write now merely for myself. I
+shall never publish anything more. The maunderings of the old are really
+most thoroughly at home in the waste-paper basket. Do sit down."
+
+Carey threw himself into a deep chair and looked round. It was a room
+of books and Oriental china. The floor was covered with an exquisite
+Persian carpet, rich and delicate in colour, with one of those vague
+and elaborate designs that stir the imagination as it is stirred by a
+strange perfume in a dark bazaar where shrouded merchants sit.
+
+"I light it with wax candles," said Sir Donald, handing Carey a cigar.
+
+"It's a good room to think in, or to be sad in."
+
+He struck a match on his boot.
+
+"You like to shut out London," he continued.
+
+"Yes. Yet I live in it."
+
+"And hate it. So do I. London's like a black-browed brute that gets an
+unholy influence over you. It would turn Mark Tapley into an Ibsen man.
+Yet one can't get away from it."
+
+"It holds interesting minds and interesting faces."
+
+"Didn't Persia?"
+
+"Lethargy dwells there and in all Eastern lands."
+
+"You have made up your mind to spend the rest of your days in the fog?"
+
+"No. Indeed, only to-day I acquired a Campo Santo with cypress trees, in
+which I intend to make a home for any dying romance that still lingers
+within me."
+
+He spoke with a sort of wistful whimsicality. Carey stared hard at him.
+
+"A Campo Santo's a place for the dead."
+
+"Why not for the dying? Don't they need holy ground as much?"
+
+"And where's this holy ground of yours?"
+
+Sir Donald got up from his chair, went over to the bureau, opened a
+drawer, and took out of it a large photograph rolled round a piece of
+wood, which he handed to Carey, who swiftly spread it out on his knees.
+
+"That is it."
+
+"I say, Sir Donald, d'you mind my asking for a whisky-and-soda?"
+
+"I beg your pardon."
+
+He hastily touched a bell and ordered it. Meanwhile Carey examined the
+photograph.
+
+"What do you think of it?" Sir Donald asked.
+
+"Well--Italy obviously."
+
+"Yes, and a conventional part of Italy."
+
+"Maggiore?"
+
+"No, Como."
+
+"The playground of the honeymoon couple."
+
+"Not where my Campo Santo is. They go to Cadenabbia, Bellagio, Villa
+D'Este sometimes."
+
+"I see the fascination. But it looks haunted. You've bought it?"
+
+"Yes. The matter was arranged to-day."
+
+The photograph showed a large, long house, or rather two houses divided
+by a piazza with slender columns. In the foreground was water. Through
+the arches of the piazza water was also visible, a cascade falling in
+the black cleft of a mountain gorge dark with the night of cypresses.
+To the right of the house, rising from the lake, was a tall old wall
+overgrown with masses of creeping plants and climbing roses. Over it
+more cypresses looked, and at the base of it, near the house, were a
+flight of worn steps disappearing into the lake, and an arched doorway
+with an elaborately-wrought iron grille. Beneath the photograph was
+written, "_Casa Felice_."
+
+"Casa Felice, h'm!" said Carey, with his eyes on the photograph.
+
+"You think the name inappropriate?"
+
+"Who knows? One can be wretched among sunbeams. One might be gay among
+cypresses. And Casa Felice belongs to you?"
+
+"From to-day."
+
+"Old--of course?"
+
+"Yes. There is a romance connected with the house."
+
+"What is it?"
+
+"Long ago two guilty lovers deserted their respective mates and the
+brilliant world they had figured in, and fled there together."
+
+"And quarrelled and were generally wretched there for how many months?"
+
+"For eight years."
+
+"The devil! Fidelity gone mad!"
+
+"It is said that during those years the mistress never left the garden,
+except to plunge into the lake on moonlight nights and swim through the
+silver with her lover."
+
+Carey was silent. He did not take his eyes from the photograph,
+which seemed to fascinate him. When the servant came in with the
+whisky-and-soda he started.
+
+"Not a place to be alone in," he said.
+
+He drank, and stared again at the photograph.
+
+"There's something about the place that holds one even in a photograph,"
+he added.
+
+"One can feel the strange intrigue that made the house a hermitage. It
+has been a hermitage ever since."
+
+"Ah!"
+
+"An old Italian lady, very rich, owned it, but never lived there. She
+recently died, and her heir consented to sell it to me."
+
+"Well, I should like to see it in the flesh--or the bricks and mortar.
+But it's not a place to be alone in," repeated Carey. "It wants a woman
+if ever a house did."
+
+"What sort of woman?"
+
+Sir Donald had sat down again on the chair opposite, and was looking
+with his exhausted eyes through the smoke of the cigars at Carey.
+
+"A fair woman, a woman with a white face, a slim woman with eyes that
+are cords to draw men to her and bind them to her, and a voice that can
+sing them into the islands of the sirens."
+
+"Are there such women in a world that has forgotten Ulysses?"
+
+"Don't you know it?"
+
+He rolled the photograph round the piece of wood and laid it on a table.
+
+"I can only think of one who at all answers to your description."
+
+"The one of whom I was thinking."
+
+"Lady Holme?"
+
+"Of course."
+
+"Don't you think she would be dreadfully bored in Casa Felice?"
+
+"Horribly, horribly. Unless--"
+
+"Unless?"
+
+"Who knows what? But there's very often an unless hanging about, like
+a man at a street corner, that--" He broke off, then added abruptly,
+"Invite me to Casa Felice some day."
+
+"I do."
+
+"When will you be going there?"
+
+"As soon as the London season is over. Some time in August. Will you
+come then?"
+
+"The house is ready for you?"
+
+"It will be. The necessary repairs will be begun now. I have bought it
+furnished."
+
+"The lovers' furniture?"
+
+"Yes. I shall add a number of my own things, picked up on my
+wanderings."
+
+"I'll come in August if you'll have me. But I'll give you the season to
+think whether you'll have me or whether you won't. I'm a horrible
+bore in a house--the lazy man who does nothing and knows a lot. Casa
+Felice--Casa Felice. You won't alter the name?"
+
+"Would you advise me to?"
+
+"I don't know. To keep it is to tempt the wrath of the gods, but I
+should keep it."
+
+He poured out another whisky-and-soda and suddenly began to curse Miss
+Schley.
+
+Sir Donald had spoken to her after Mrs. Wolfstein's lunch.
+
+"She's imitating Lady Holme," said Carey.
+
+"I cannot see the likeness," Sir Donald said. "Miss Schley seems to me
+uninteresting and common."
+
+"She is."
+
+"And Lady Holme's personality is, on the contrary; interesting and
+uncommon."
+
+"Of course. Pimpernel Schley would be an outrage in that Campo Santo of
+yours. And yet there is a likeness, and she's accentuating it every day
+she lives."
+
+"Why?"
+
+"Ask the women why they do the cursed things they do do."
+
+"You are a woman-hater?"
+
+"Not I. Didn't I say just now that Casa Felice wanted a woman? But the
+devil generally dwells where the angel dwells--cloud and moon together.
+Now you want to get on with that poem."
+
+Half London was smiling gently at the resemblance between Lady Holme
+and Miss Schley before the former made up her mind to ask the latter
+to "something." And when, moved to action by certain evidences of the
+Philadelphia talent which could not be misunderstood, she did make up
+her mind, she resolved that the "something" should be very large and by
+no means very intimate. Safety wanders in crowds.
+
+She sent out cards for a reception, one of those affairs that begin
+about eleven, are tremendous at half past, look thin at twelve, and have
+faded away long before the clock strikes one.
+
+Lord Holme hated them. On several occasions he had been known to throw
+etiquette to the winds and not to turn up when his wife was giving them.
+He always made what he considered to be a good excuse. Generally he had
+"gone into the country to look at a horse." As Lady Holme sent out her
+cards, and saw her secretary writing the words, "Miss Pimpernel Schley,"
+on an envelope which contained one, she asked herself whether her
+husband would be likely to play her false this time.
+
+"Shall you be here on the twelfth?" she asked him casually.
+
+"Why? What's up on the twelfth?"
+
+"I'm going to have one of those things you hate--before the Arkell House
+ball. I chose that night so that everyone should run away early! You
+won't be obliged to look at a horse in the country that particular day?"
+
+She spoke laughingly, as if she wanted him to say no, but would not be
+very angry if he didn't. Lord Holme tugged his moustache and looked very
+serious indeed.
+
+"Another!" he ejaculated. "We're always havin' 'em. Any music?"
+
+"No, no, nothing. There are endless dinners that night, and Mrs.
+Crutchby's concert with Calve, and the ball. People will only run in and
+say something silly and run out again."
+
+"Who's comin'?"
+
+"Everybody. All the tiresome dears that have had their cards left."
+
+Lord Holme stared at his varnished boots and looked rather like a
+puzzled boy at a _viva voce_ examination.
+
+"The worst of it is, I can't be in the country lookin' at a horse that
+night," he said with depression.
+
+"Why not?"
+
+She hastily added:
+
+"But why should you? You ought to be here."
+
+"I'd rather be lookin' at a horse. But I'm booked for the dinner to
+Rowley at the Nation Club that night. I might say the speeches were too
+long and I couldn't get away. Eh?"
+
+He looked at her for support.
+
+"You really ought to be here, Fritz," she answered.
+
+It ended there. Lady Holme knew her husband pretty well. She fancied
+that the speeches at the dinner given to Sir Jacob Rowley, ex-Governor
+of some place she knew nothing about, would turn out to be very lengthy
+indeed--speeches to keep a man far from his home till after midnight.
+
+On the evening of the twelfth Lord Holme had not arrived when the first
+of his wife's guests came slowly up the stairs, and Lady Holme began
+gently to make his excuses to all the tiresome dears who had had their
+cards left at forty-two Cadogan Square. There were a great many
+tiresome dears. The stream flowed steadily, and towards half-past eleven
+resembled a flood-tide.
+
+Lady Cardington, Lady Manby, Mr. Bry, Sally Perceval had one by one
+appeared, and Robin Pierce's dark head was visible mounting slowly amid
+a throng of other heads of all shapes, sizes and tints.
+
+Lady Holme was looking particularly well. She was dressed in black.
+Of course black suits everybody. It suited her even better than most
+people, and her gown was a triumph. She was going on to the Arkell House
+ball, and wore the Holme diamonds, which were superb, and which she had
+recently had reset. She was in perfect health, and felt unusually
+young and unusually defiant. As she stood at the top of the staircase,
+smiling, shaking hands with people, and watching Robin Pierce
+coming slowly nearer, she wondered a little at certain secret
+uneasinesses--they could scarcely be called tremors--which had recently
+oppressed her. How absurd of her to have been troubled, even lightly,
+by the impertinent proceedings of an American actress, a nobody from the
+States, without position, without distinction, without even a husband.
+How could it matter to her what such a little person--she always called
+Pimpernel Schley a little person in her thoughts--did or did not do?
+As Robin came towards her she almost--but not quite--wished that the
+speeches at the dinner to Sir Jacob Rowley had not been so long as
+they evidently had been, and that her husband were standing beside her,
+looking enormous and enormously bored.
+
+"What a crowd!"
+
+"Yes. We can't talk now. Are you going to Arkell House?"
+
+Robin nodded.
+
+"Take me in to supper there."
+
+"May I? Thank you. I'm going with Rupert Carey."
+
+"Really!"
+
+At this moment Lady Holme's eyes and manner wandered. She had just
+caught a glimpse of Mrs. Wolfstein, a mass of jewels, and of Pimpernel
+Schley at the foot of the staircase, had just noticed that the latter
+happened to be dressed in black.
+
+"Bye-bye!" she added.
+
+Robin Pierce walked on into the drawing-rooms looking rather
+preoccupied.
+
+Everybody came slowly up the stairs. It was impossible to do anything
+else. But it seemed to Lady Holme that Miss Schley walked far more
+slowly than the rest of the tiresome dears, with a deliberation that
+had a touch of insolence in it. Her straw-coloured hair was done exactly
+like Lady Holme's, but she wore no diamonds in it. Indeed, she had on
+no jewels. And this absence of jewels, and her black gown, made her skin
+look almost startlingly white, if possible whiter than Lady Holme's.
+She smiled quietly as she mounted the stairs, as if she were wrapt in a
+pleasant, innocent dream which no one knew anything about.
+
+Amalia Wolfstein was certainly a splendid--a too splendid--foil to her.
+The Jewess was dressed in the most vivid orange colour, and was very
+much made up. Her large eyebrows were heavily darkened. Her lips were
+scarlet. Her eyes, which moved incessantly, had a lustre which suggested
+oil with a strong light shining on it. "Henry" followed in her wake,
+looking intensely nervous, and unnaturally alive and observant, as if
+he were searching in the crowd for a bit of gold that someone had
+accidentally dropped. When anyone spoke to him he replied with extreme
+vivacity but in the fewest possible words. He held his spare figure
+slightly sideways as he walked, and his bald head glistened under the
+electric lamps. Behind them, in the distance, was visible the yellow and
+sunken face of Sir Donald Ulford.
+
+When Miss Schley gained the top of the staircase Lady Holme saw that
+their gowns were almost exactly alike. Hers was sewn with diamonds, but
+otherwise there was scarcely any difference. And she suddenly felt as if
+the difference made by the jewels was not altogether in her favour, as
+if she were one of those women who look their best when they are not
+wearing any ornaments. Possibly Mrs. Wolfstein made all jewellery seem
+vulgar for the moment. She looked like an exceedingly smart jeweller's
+shop rather too brilliantly illuminated; "as if she were for sale," as
+an old and valued friend of hers aptly murmured into the ear of someone
+who had known her ever since she began to give good dinners.
+
+"Here we are! I'm chaperoning Pimpernel. But her mother arrives
+to-morrow," began Mrs. Wolfstein, with her strongest accent, while
+Miss Schley put out a limp hand to meet Lady Holme's and very slightly
+accentuated her smile.
+
+"Your mother? I shall be delighted to meet her. I hope you'll bring her
+one day," said Lady Holme; thinking more emphatically than ever that for
+a woman with a complexion as perfect as hers it was a mistake to wear
+many jewels.
+
+"I'll be most pleased, but mother don't go around much," replied Miss
+Schley.
+
+"Does she know London?"
+
+"She does not. She spends most of her time sitting around in Susanville,
+but she's bound to look after me in this great city."
+
+Mrs. Wolfstein was by this time in violent conversation with a pale
+young man, who always looked as if he were on the point of fainting, but
+who went literally everywhere. Miss Schley glanced up into Lady Holme's
+eyes.
+
+"I hoped to make the acquaintance of Lord Holme to-night," she murmured.
+"Folks tell me he's a most beautiful man. Isn't he anywhere around?"
+
+She looked away into vacancy, ardently. Lady Holme felt a slight
+tingling sensation in her cool skin. For a moment it seemed to her as if
+she watched herself in caricature, distorted perhaps by a mirror with a
+slight flaw in it.
+
+"My husband was obliged to dine out to-night; unfortunately. I hope
+he'll be here in a moment, but he may be kept, as there are to be some
+dreadful speeches afterwards. I can't think why elderly men always want
+to get up and talk nonsense about the Royal family after a heavy dinner.
+It's so bad for the digestion and the--ah, Sir Donald! Sweet of you to
+turn up. Your boy's been so unkind. I asked him to call, or he asked to
+call, and he's never been near me."
+
+Miss Schley drifted away and was swallowed by the crowd. Sir Donald had
+arrived at the top of the stairs.
+
+"Leo's been away in Scotland ever since he had the pleasure of meeting
+you. He only came back to-night."
+
+"Then I'm not quite so hurt. He's always running about, I suppose, to
+kill things, like my husband."
+
+"He does manage a good deal in that way. If you are going to the Arkell
+House ball you'll meet him there. He and his wife are both--"
+
+"How did do! Oh, Charley, I never expected to see you. I thought it
+wasn't the thing for the 2nd to turn up at little hay parties like this.
+Kitty Barringlave is in the far room, dreadfully bored. Go and cheer her
+up. Tell her what'll win the Cup. She's pale and peaky with ignorance
+about Ascot this year. Both going to Arkell House, Sir Donald, did you
+say? Bring your son to me, won't you? But of course you're a wise man
+trotting off to bed."
+
+"No. The Duke is a very old friend of mine, and so--"
+
+"Perfect. We'll meet then. They say it's really locomotor ataxia, poor
+fellow I but--ah, there's Fritz!"
+
+Sir Donald looked at her with a sudden inquiring shrewdness, that lit up
+his faded eyes and made them for a moment almost young. He had caught a
+sound of vexation in her voice, which reminded him oddly of the sound
+in her singing voice when Miss Filberte was making a fiasco of the
+accompaniment. Lord Holme was visible and audible in the hall. His
+immense form towered above his guests, and his tremendous bass voice
+dominated the hum of conversation round him. Lady Holme could see from
+where she stood that he was in a jovial and audacious mood. The dinner
+to Sir Jacob Rowley had evidently been well cooked and gay. Fritz had
+the satisfied and rather larky air of a man who has been having one good
+time and intends to have another. She glanced into the drawing-rooms.
+They were crammed. She saw in the distance Lady Cardington talking to
+Sir Donald Ulford. Both of them looked rather pathetic. Mrs. Wolfstein
+was not far off, standing in the midst of a group and holding forth with
+almost passionate vivacity and self-possession. Her husband was gliding
+sideways through the crowd with his peculiarly furtive and watchful air,
+which always suggested the old nursery game, "Here I am on Tom Tiddler's
+ground, picking up gold and silver." Lady Manby was laughing in a corner
+with an archdeacon who looked like a guardsman got up in fancy dress.
+Mr. Bry, his eyeglass fixed in his left eye, came towards the staircase,
+moving delicately like Agag, and occasionally dropping a cold or
+sarcastic word to an acquaintance. He reached Lady Holme when Lord Holme
+was half-way up the stairs, and at once saw him.
+
+"A giant refreshed with wine," he observed, dropping his eyeglass.
+
+It was such a perfect description of Lord Holme in his present condition
+that two or three people who were standing with Lady Holme smiled,
+looking down the staircase. Lady Holme did not smile. She continued
+chattering, but her face wore a discontented expression. Mr. Bry noticed
+it. There were very few things he did not notice, although he claimed to
+be the most short-sighted man in London.
+
+"Why is your husband so dutiful to-night?" he murmured to his hostess.
+"I thought he always had to go into the country to look at a gee-gee on
+these occasions."
+
+"He had to be in town for the dinner to Sir Jacob Rowley. I begged him
+to come back in--How did do! How did do! Yes, very. Mr. Raleigh, do tell
+the opera people not to put on Romeo too often this season. Of course
+Melba's splendid in it, and all that, but still--"
+
+Mr. Bry fixed his eyeglass again, and began to smile gently like an
+evil-minded baby. Lord Holme's brown face was full in view, grinning.
+His eyes were looking about with unusual vivacity.
+
+"How early you are, Fritz! Good boy. I want you to look after--"
+
+"I say, Vi, why didn't you tell me?"
+
+Mr. Bry, letting his eyeglass fall, looked abstracted and lent an
+attentive ear. If he were not playing prompter to social comedies he
+generally stood in the wings, watching and listening to them with a cold
+amusement that was seldom devoid of a spice of venom.
+
+"Tell you what, Fritz?"
+
+"That Miss Schley was comin' to-night. Everyone's talking about her. I
+sat next Laycock at dinner and he was ravin'. Told me she was to be here
+and I didn't know it. Rather ridiculous, you know. Where is she?"
+
+"Somewhere in the rooms."
+
+"What's she like?"
+
+"Oh!--I don't know. She's in black. Go and look for her."
+
+Lord Holme strode on. As he passed Mr. Bry he said:
+
+"I say, Bry, d'you know Miss Pimpernel Schley?"
+
+"Naturally."
+
+"Come with me, there's a good chap, and--what's she like?"
+
+As they went on into the drawing-rooms Mr. Bry dropped out:
+
+"Some people say she's like Lady Holme."
+
+"Like Vi! Is she? Laycock's been simply ravin'--simply ravin'--and
+Laycock's not a feller to--where is she?
+
+"We shall come to her. So there was no gee-gee to look at in the country
+to-night?"
+
+Lord Holme burst into a roar of laughter.
+
+"There's the vestal tending her lamp," said Mr. Bry a moment later.
+
+"The what up to what?"
+
+"Miss Pimpernel Schley keeping the fire of adoration carefully alight."
+
+"Where?"
+
+"There."
+
+"Oh, I see! Jove, what a skin, though! Eh! Isn't it? She is deuced like
+Vi at a distance. Vi looks up just like that when she's singin'. Doesn't
+she, though? Eh?"
+
+He went on towards her.
+
+Mr. Bry followed him, murmuring.
+
+"The giant refreshed with wine. No gee-gee to-night. No gee-gee."
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII
+
+"THE brougham is at the door, my lady."
+
+"Tell his lordship."
+
+The butler went out, and Lady Holme's maid put a long black cloak
+carefully over her mistress's shoulders. While she did this Lady Holme
+stood quite still gazing into vacancy. They were in the now deserted
+yellow drawing-room, which was still brilliantly lit, and full of the
+already weary-looking flowers which had been arranged for the reception.
+The last guest had gone and the carriage was waiting to take the Holmes
+to Arkell House.
+
+The maid did something to the diamonds in Lady Holme's hair with deft
+fingers, and the light touch seemed to wake Lady Holme from a reverie.
+She went to a mirror and looked into it steadily. The maid stood behind.
+After a moment Lady Holme lifted her hand suddenly to her head, as
+if she were going to take off her tiara. The maid could not repress
+a slight movement of startled astonishment. Lady Holme saw it in the
+glass, dropped her hand, and said:
+
+"C'est tout, Josephine. Vous pouvez vous en aller."
+
+"Merci, miladi."
+
+She went out quietly.
+
+Two or three minutes passed. Then Lord Holme's deep bass voice was
+audible, humming vigorously:
+
+
+  "Ina, Ina, oh, you should have seen her!
+     Seen her with her eyes cast down.
+       She looked upon the floor,
+         And all the Johnnies swore
+   That Ina, Ina--oh, you should have seen her!--
+     That Ina was the _chic_-est girl in town."
+
+
+Lady Holme frowned.
+
+"Fritz!" she called rather sharply.
+
+Lord Holme appeared with a coat thrown over his arm and a hat in his
+hand. His brown face was beaming with self-satisfaction.
+
+"Well, old girl, ready? What's up now?"
+
+"I wish you wouldn't sing those horrible music-hall songs. You know I
+hate them."
+
+"Music-hall! I like that. Why, it's the best thing in _The Chick from
+the Army and Navy_ at the Blue Theatre."
+
+"It's disgustingly vulgar."
+
+"What next? Why, I saw the Lord Chan--"
+
+"I daresay you did. Vulgarity will appeal to the Saints of Heaven next
+season if things go on as they're going now. Come along."
+
+She went out of the room, walking more quickly than she usually walked,
+and holding herself very upright. Lord Holme followed, forming the words
+of his favourite song with his lips, and screwing up his eyes as if he
+were looking at an improper peepshow. When they were in the electric
+brougham, which spun along with scarcely any noise, he began:
+
+"I say, Vi, how long've you known Miss Schley?"
+
+"I don't know. Some weeks."
+
+"Why didn't you tell me?"
+
+"I did. I said I had met her at Mrs. Wolfstein's lunch."
+
+"No, but why didn't you tell me how like you she was?"
+
+There was complete silence in the brougham for a minute. Then Lady Holme
+said:
+
+"I had no idea she was like me."
+
+"Then you're blind, old girl. She's like you if you'd been a chorus-girl
+and known a lot of things you don't know."
+
+"Really. Perhaps she has been a chorus-girl."
+
+"I'll bet she has, whether she says so or not."
+
+He gave a deep chuckle. Lady Holme's gown rustled as she leaned back in
+her corner.
+
+"And she's goin' to Arkell House. Americans are the very devil for
+gettin' on. Laycock was tellin' me to-night that--"
+
+"I don't wish to hear Mr. Laycock's stories, Fritz. They don't amuse
+me."
+
+"Well, p'r'aps they're hardly the thing for you, Vi. But they're deuced
+amusin' for all that."
+
+He chuckled again. Lady Holme felt an intense desire to commit some
+act of physical violence. She shut her eyes. In a minute she heard her
+husband once more beginning to hum the refrain about Ina. How utterly
+careless he was of her desires and requests. There was something animal
+in his forgetfulness and indifference. She had loved the animal in him.
+She did love it. Something deep down in her nature answered eagerly to
+its call. But at moments she hated it almost with fury. She hated it now
+and longed to use the whip, as the tamer in a menagerie uses it when one
+of his beasts shows its teeth, or sulkily refuses to perform one of its
+tricks.
+
+Lord Holme went on calmly humming till the brougham stopped in the long
+line of carriages that stretched away into the night from the great
+portico of Arkell House.
+
+People were already going in to supper when the Holmes arrived. The
+Duke, upon whom a painful malady was beginning to creep, was bravely
+welcoming his innumerable guests. He found it already impossible to go
+unaided up and down stairs, and sat in a large armchair close to the
+ball-room, with one of his pretty daughters near him, talking brightly,
+and occasionally stealing wistful glances at the dancers, who were
+visible through a high archway to his left. He was a thin, middle-aged
+man, with a curious, transparent look in his face--something crystalline
+that was nearly beautiful.
+
+The Duchess was swarthy and masterful, very intelligent and _grande
+dame_. Vivacity was easy to her. People said she had been a good hostess
+in her cradle, and that she had presided over the ceremony of her own
+baptism in a most autocratic and successful manner. It was quite likely.
+
+After a word with the Duke, Lady Holme went slowly towards the ballroom
+with her husband. She did not mean to dance, and began to refuse the
+requests of would-be partners with charming protestations of fatigue.
+Lord Holme was scanning the ballroom with his big brown eyes.
+
+"Are you going to dance, Fritz?" asked Lady Holme, nodding to Robin
+Pierce, whom she had just seen standing at a little distance with Rupert
+Carey.
+
+The latter had not seen her yet, but as Robin returned her nod he looked
+hastily round.
+
+"Yes, I promised Miss Schley to struggle through a waltz with her.
+Wonder if she's dancin'?"
+
+Lady Holme bowed, a little ostentatiously, to Rupert Carey. Her husband
+saw it and began at once to look pugilistic. He could not say anything,
+for at this moment two or three men strolled up to speak to Lady Holme.
+While she was talking to them, Pimpernel Schley came in sight waltzing
+with Mr. Laycock, one of those abnormally thin, narrow-featured, smart
+men, with bold, inexpressive ayes, in whom London abounds.
+
+Lord Holme's under-jaw resumed its natural position, and he walked away
+and was lost in the crowd, following the two dancers.
+
+"Take me in to supper, Robin. I'm tired."
+
+"This way. I thought you were never coming."
+
+"People stayed so late. I can't think why. I'm sure it was dreadfully
+dull and foolish. How odd Mr. Carey's looking! When I bowed to him just
+now he didn't return it, but only stared at me as if I were a stranger."
+
+Robin Pierce made no rejoinder. They descended the great staircase and
+went towards the picture-gallery.
+
+"Find a corner where we can really talk."
+
+"Yes, yes."
+
+He spoke eagerly.
+
+"Here--this is perfect."
+
+They sat down at a table for two that was placed in an angle of the
+great room. Upon the walls above them looked down a Murillo and a
+Velasquez. Lady Holme was under the Murillo, which represented three
+Spanish street boys playing a game in the dust with pieces of money.
+
+"A table for two," said Robin Pierce. "I have always said that the
+Duchess understands the art of entertaining better than anyone in
+London, except you--when you choose."
+
+"To-night I really couldn't choose. Later on, I'm going to give two or
+three concerts. Is anything the matter with Mr. Carey?"
+
+"Do you think so?"
+
+"Well, I hope it isn't true what people are saying."
+
+"What are they saying?"
+
+"That's he's not very judicious in one way."
+
+A footman poured champagne into her glass. Robin Pierce touched the
+glass.
+
+"That way?"
+
+"Yes. It would be too sad."
+
+"Let us hope it isn't true, then."
+
+"You know him well. Is it true?"
+
+"Would you care if it was?"
+
+He looked at her earnestly.
+
+"Yes. I like Mr. Carey."
+
+There was a rather unusual sound of sincerity in her voice.
+
+"And what is it that you like in him?"
+
+"Oh, I don't know. He talks shocking nonsense, of course, and is down on
+people and things. And he's absurdly unsophisticated at moments, though
+he knows the world so well. He's not like you--not a diplomat. But I
+believe if he had a chance he might do something great."
+
+Robin felt as if the hidden woman had suddenly begun to speak. Why did
+she speak about Rupert Carey?
+
+"Do you like a man to do something great?" he said.
+
+"Oh, yes. All women do."
+
+"But I perpetually hear you laughing at the big people--the Premiers,
+the Chancellors, the Archbishops, the Generals of the world."
+
+"Because I've always known them. And really they are so often quite
+absurd and tiresome."
+
+"And--Rupert Carey?"
+
+"Oh, he's nothing at all, poor fellow! Still there's something in his
+face that makes me think he could do an extraordinary thing if he had
+the chance. I saw it there to-night when he didn't bow to me. There's
+Sir Donald's son. And what a dreadful-looking woman just behind him."
+
+Leo Ulford was coming down the gallery with a gaunt, aristocratic,
+harsh-featured girl. Behind him walked Mr. Bry, conducting a very young
+old woman, immensely smart, immensely vivacious, and immensely pink, who
+moved with an unnecessary alertness that was birdlike, and turned her
+head about sharply on a long, thin neck decorated with a large diamond
+dog-collar. Slung at her side there was a tiny jewelled tube.
+
+"That's Mrs. Leo."
+
+"She must be over sixty."
+
+"She is."
+
+The quartet sat down at the next table. Leo Ulford did not see Lady
+Holme at once. When he caught sight of her, he got up, came to her,
+stood over her and pressed her hand.
+
+"Been away," he explained. "Only back to-night."
+
+"I've been complaining to your father about you."
+
+A slow smile overspread his chubby face.
+
+"May I see you again after supper?"
+
+"If you can find me."
+
+"I can always manage to find what I want," he returned, still smiling.
+
+When he had gone back to his table Robin Pierce said:
+
+"How insolent Englishmen are allowed to be in Society! It always strikes
+me after I've been a long time abroad. Doesn't anybody mind it?"
+
+"Do you mean that you consider Mr. Ulford insolent?"
+
+"In manner. Yes, I do."
+
+"Well, I think there's something like Fritz about him."
+
+Robin Pierce could not tell from the way this was said what would be a
+safe remark to make. He therefore changed the subject.
+
+"Do you know what Sir Donald's been doing?" he said.
+
+"No. What?"
+
+"Buying a Campo Santo."
+
+"A Campo Santo! Is he going to bury himself, then? What do you mean,
+Robin?"
+
+"He called it a Campo Santo to Carey. It's really a wonderful house in
+Italy, on Como. Casa Felice is the name of it. I know it well."
+
+"Casa Felice. How delicious! But is it the place for Sir Donald?"
+
+"Why not?"
+
+"For an old, tired man. Casa Felice. Won't the name seem an irony to him
+when he's there?"
+
+"You think an old man can't be happy anywhere?"
+
+"I can't imagine being happy old."
+
+"Why not?"
+
+"Oh!"--she lowered her voice--"if you want to know, look at Mrs.
+Ulford."
+
+"Your husk theory again. A question of looks. But you will grow old
+gracefully--some day in the far future."
+
+"I don't think I shall grow old at all."
+
+"Then--?"
+
+"I think I shall die before that comes--say at forty-five. I couldn't
+live with wrinkles all over my face. No, Robin, I couldn't. And--look at
+Mrs. Ulford!--perhaps an ear-trumpet set with opals."
+
+"What do the wrinkles matter? But some day you'll find I'm right. You'll
+tell me so. You'll acknowledge that your charm comes from within, and
+has survived the mutilation of the husk."
+
+"Mutilation! What a hideous sound that word has. Why don't all mutilated
+people commit suicide at once? I should. Is Sir Donald going to live in
+his happy house?"
+
+"Naturally. He'll be there this August. He's invited Rupert Carey to
+stay there with him."
+
+"And you?"
+
+"Not yet."
+
+"I suppose he will. Everybody always asks you everywhere. Diplomacy is
+so universally--"
+
+She broke off. Far away, at the end of the gallery, she had caught sight
+of Miss Schley coming in with her husband. They sat down at a table near
+the door. Robin Pierce followed her eyes and understood her silence.
+
+"Are you going on the first?" he asked.
+
+"What to?"
+
+"Miss Schley's first night."
+
+"Is it on the first? I didn't know. We can't. We're dining at Brayley
+House that evening."
+
+"What a pity!" he said, with a light touch of half playful malice. "You
+would have seen her as she really is--from all accounts."
+
+"And what is Miss Schley really?"
+
+"The secret enemy of censors."
+
+"Oh!"
+
+"You dislike her. Why?"
+
+"I don't dislike her at all."
+
+"Do you like her?"
+
+"No. I like very few women. I don't understand them."
+
+"At any rate you understand--say Miss Schley--better than a man would."
+
+"Oh--a man!"
+
+"I believe all women think all men fools."
+
+Lady Holme laughed, not very gaily.
+
+"Don't they?" he insisted.
+
+"In certain ways, in certain relations of life, I suppose most men
+are--rather short-sighted."
+
+"Like Mr. Bry."
+
+"Mr. Bry is the least short-sighted man I know. That's why he always
+wears an eyeglass."
+
+"To create an illusion?"
+
+"Who knows?"
+
+She looked down the long room. Between the heads of innumerable men and
+women she could see Miss Schley. Her husband was hidden. She would have
+preferred to see him. Miss Schley's head was by no means expressive of
+the naked truth. It merely looked cool, self-possessed, and--so Lady
+Holme said to herself--extremely American. What she meant by that she
+could, perhaps, hardly have explained.
+
+"Do you admire Miss Schley's appearance?"
+
+Robin Pierce spoke again with a touch of humorous malice. He knew Lady
+Holme so well that he had no objection to seem wanting in tact to her
+when he had a secret end to gain. She looked at him sharply; leaning
+forward over the table and opening her eyes very wide.
+
+"Why are you forgetting your manners to-night and bombarding me with
+questions?"
+
+"The usual reason--devouring curiosity."
+
+She hesitated, looking at him. Then suddenly her face changed.
+Something, some imp of adorable frankness, peeped out of it at him, and
+her whole body seemed confiding.
+
+"Miss Schley is going about London imitating me. Now, isn't that true?
+Isn't she?"
+
+"I believe she is. Damned impertinence!"
+
+He muttered the last words under his breath.
+
+"How can I admire her?"
+
+There was something in the way she said that which touched him. He
+leaned forward to her.
+
+"Why not punish her for it?"
+
+"How?"
+
+"Reveal what she can't imitate."
+
+"What's that?"
+
+"All you hide and I divine."
+
+"Go on."
+
+"She mimics the husk. She couldn't mimic the kernel."
+
+"Ice, my lady?"
+
+Lady Holme started. Till the footman spoke she had not quite realised
+how deeply interested she was in the conversation. She helped herself to
+some ice.
+
+"You can go on, Mr. Pierce," she said when the man had gone.
+
+"But you understand."
+
+She shook her head, smiling. Her body still looked soft and attractive,
+and deliciously feminine.
+
+"Miss Schley happens to have some vague resemblance to you in height and
+colouring. She is a clever mimic. She used to be a professional mimic."
+
+"Really!"
+
+"That was how she first became known."
+
+"In America?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Why should she imitate me?"
+
+"Have you been nice to her?"
+
+"I don't know. Yes. Nice enough."
+
+Robin shook his head.
+
+"You think she dislikes me then?"
+
+"Do women want definite reasons for half the things they do? Miss Schley
+may not say to herself that she dislikes you, any more than you say to
+yourself that you dislike her. Nevertheless--"
+
+"We should never get on. No."
+
+"Consider yourselves enemies--for no reasons, or secret woman's reasons.
+It's safer."
+
+Lady Holme looked down the gallery again. Miss Schley's fair head was
+bending forward to some invisible person.
+
+"And the mimicry?" she asked, turning again to Robin.
+
+"Can only be applied to mannerisms, to the ninety-ninth part, the
+inconsiderable fraction of your charm. Miss Schley could never imitate
+the hidden woman, the woman who sings, the woman who laughs at, denies
+herself when she is not singing."
+
+"But no one cares for her--if she exists."
+
+There was a hint of secret bitterness in her voice when she said that.
+
+"Give her a chance--and find out. But you know already that numbers do."
+
+He tried to look into her eyes, but she avoided his gaze and got up.
+
+"Take me back to the ballroom."
+
+"You are going to dance?"
+
+"I want to see who's here."
+
+As they passed the next table Lady Holme nodded to Leo Ulford. He bowed
+in return and indicated that he was following almost immediately. Mrs.
+Ulford put down her ear-trumpet, turned her head sharply, and looked at
+Lady Holme sideways, fluttering her pink eyelids.
+
+"How exactly like a bird she is," murmured Lady Holme.
+
+"Exactly--moulting."
+
+Lady Holme meant as she walked down the gallery; to stop and speak a
+few gay words to Miss Schley and her husband, but when she drew near to
+their table Lord Holme was holding forth with such unusual volubility,
+and Miss Schley was listening with such profound attention, that it did
+not seem worth while, and she went quietly on, thinking they did not see
+her. Lord Holme did not. But the American smiled faintly as Lady Holme
+and Robin disappeared into the hall. Then she said, in reply to her
+animated companion:
+
+"I'm sure if I am like Lady Holme I ought to say _Te Deum_ and think
+myself a lucky girl. I ought, indeed."
+
+Lady Holme had not been in the ballroom five minutes before Leo Ulford
+came up smiling.
+
+"Here I am," he remarked, as if the statement were certain to give
+universal satisfaction.
+
+Robin looked black and moved a step closer to Lady Holme.
+
+"Thank you, Mr. Pierce," she said.
+
+She took Leo Ulford's arm, nodded to Robin, and walked away.
+
+Robin stood looking after her. He started when he heard Carey's voice
+saying:
+
+"Why d'you let her dance with that blackguard?"
+
+"Hulloa, Carey?"
+
+"Come to the supper-room. I want to have a yarn with you. And
+all this"--he made a wavering, yet violent, gesture towards the
+dancers--"might be a Holbein."
+
+"A dance of death? What nonsense you talk!"
+
+"Come to the supper-room."
+
+Robin looked at his friend narrowly.
+
+"You're bored. Let's go and take a stroll down Park Lane."
+
+"No. Well, then, if you won't--"
+
+"I'll come."
+
+He put his arm through Carey's, and they went out together.
+
+Lady Holme was generally agreeable to men. She was particularly charming
+to Leo Ulford that night. He was not an interesting man, but he seemed
+to interest her very much. They sat out together for a long time in the
+corner of a small drawing-room, far away from the music. She had said to
+Robin Pierce that she thought there was something about Leo Ulford
+that was like her husband, and when she talked to him she found the
+resemblance even greater than she had supposed.
+
+Lord Holme and Leo Ulford were of a similar type. Both were strong,
+healthy, sensual, slangy, audacious in a dull kind of fashion--Lady
+Holme did not call it dull--serenely and perpetually intent upon having
+everything their own way in life. Both lived for the body and ignored
+the soul, as they would have ignored a man with a fine brain, a
+passionate heart, a narrow chest and undeveloped muscles. Such a man
+they would have summed up as "a rotter." If they ever thought of the
+soul at all, it was probably under some such comprehensive name. Both
+had the same simple and blatant aim in life, an aim which governed all
+their actions and was the generator of most of their thoughts. This
+aim, expressed in their own terse language, was "to do themselves
+jolly well." Both had, so far, succeeded in their ambition. Both were,
+consequently, profoundly convinced of their own cleverness. Intellectual
+conceit--the conceit of the brain--is as nothing to physical
+conceit--the conceit of the body. Acute intelligence is always
+capable of uneasiness, can always make room for a doubt. But the
+self-satisfaction of the little-brained and big-muscled man who has
+never had a rebuff or a day's illness is cased in triple brass. Lady
+Holme knew this self-satisfaction well. She had seen it staring out of
+her husband's big brown eyes. She saw it now in the boyish eyes of Leo
+Ulford. She was at home with it and rather liked it. In truth, it had
+at least one merit--from the woman's point of view--it was decisively
+masculine.
+
+Whether Leo Ulford was, or was not, a blackguard; as Mrs. Trent had
+declared, did not matter to her. Three-quarters of the men she knew were
+blackguards according to the pinched ideas of Little Peddlington; and
+Mrs. Trent might originally have issued from there.
+
+She got on easily with Leo Ulford because she was experienced in the
+treatment of his type. She knew exactly what to do with it; how to lead
+it on, how to fend it off, how to throw cold water on its enterprise
+without dashing it too greatly, how to banish any little, sulky
+cloud that might appear on the brassy horizon without seeming to be
+solicitous.
+
+The type is amazingly familiar to the woman of the London world. She can
+recognize it at a glance, and can send it in its armchair canter round
+the circus with scarce a crack of the ring-mistress's whip.
+
+To-night Lady Holme enjoyed governing it more than usual, and for a
+subtle reason.
+
+In testing her power upon Leo Ulford she was secretly practising her
+siren's art, with a view that would have surprised and disgusted him,
+still more amazed him, had he known it. She was firing at the dummy
+in order that later she might make sure of hitting the living man. Leo
+Ulford was the dummy. The living man would be Fritz.
+
+Both dummy and living man were profoundly ignorant of her moving
+principle. The one was radiant with self-satisfaction under her
+fusillade. The other, ignorant of it so far, would have been furious in
+the knowledge of it.
+
+She knew-and laughed at the men.
+
+Presently she turned the conversation, which was getting a little too
+personal--on Leo Ulford's side--to a subject very present in her mind
+that night.
+
+"Did you have a talk with Miss Schley the other day after I left?"
+she asked. "I ran away on purpose to give you a chance. Wasn't it
+good-natured of me, when I was really longing to stay?"
+
+Leo Ulford stretched out his long legs slowly, his type's way of
+purring.
+
+"I'd rather have gone on yarning with you."
+
+"Then you did have a talk! She was at my house to-night, looking quite
+delicious. You know she's conquered London?"
+
+"That sort's up to every move on the board."
+
+"What do you mean? What board?"
+
+She looked at him with innocent inquiry.
+
+"I wish men didn't know so much," she added; with a sort of soft
+vexation. "You have so many opportunities of acquiring knowledge and we
+so few--if we respect the _convenances_."
+
+"Miss Schley wouldn't respect 'em."
+
+He chuckled, and again drew up and then stretched out his legs, slowly
+and luxuriously.
+
+"How can you know?"
+
+"She's not the sort that does. She's the sort that's always kicking over
+the traces and keeping it dark. I know 'em."
+
+"I think you're rather unkind. Miss Schley's mother arrives to-morrow."
+
+Leo Ulford put up his hands to his baby moustache and shook with
+laughter.
+
+"That's the only thing she wanted to set her up in business," he
+ejaculated. "A marmar. I do love those Americans!"
+
+"But you speak as if Mrs. Schley were a stage property!"
+
+"I'll bet she is. Wait till you see her. Why, it's a regular profession
+in the States, being a marmar. I tell you what--"
+
+He leaned forward and fixed his blue eyes on Lady Holme, with an air of
+profound acuteness.
+
+"Are you going to see her?"
+
+"Mrs. Schley? I daresay."
+
+"Well, you remember what I tell you. She'll be as dry as a dog-biscuit,
+wear a cap and spectacles with gold rims, and say nothing but 'Oh,
+my, yes indeed!' to everything that's said to her. Does she come from
+Susanville?"
+
+"How extraordinary! I believe she does."
+
+Leo Ulford's laugh was triumphant and prolonged.
+
+"That's where they breed marmars!" he exclaimed, when he was able to
+speak. "Women are stunning."
+
+"I'm afraid I don't quite understand," said Lady Holme, preserving a
+quiet air of pupilage. "But perhaps it's better I shouldn't. Anyhow, I
+am quite sure Miss Schley's mother will be worthy of her daughter."
+
+"You may bet your bottom dollar on that. She'll be what they call 'a
+sootable marmar.' I must get my wife to shoot a card on her."
+
+"I hope you'll introduce me to Mrs. Ulford. I should like to know her."
+
+"Yours isn't the voice to talk down a trumpet," said Leo Ulford, with a
+sudden air of surliness.
+
+"I should like to know her now I know you and your father."
+
+At the mention of his father Leo Ulford's discontented expression
+increased.
+
+"My father's a rotter," he said. "Never cared for anything. No shot to
+speak of. He can sit on a horse all right. Had to, in South America
+and Morocco and all those places. But he never really cared about it,
+I don't believe. Why, he'd rather look at a picture than a thoroughbred
+any day!"
+
+At this moment Sir Donald wandered into the room, with his hands behind
+his thin back, and his eyes searching the walls. The Duke possessed a
+splendid collection of pictures.
+
+"There he is!" said Leo, gruffly.
+
+"He doesn't see us. Go and tell him I'm here."
+
+"Why? he might go out again if we keep mum."
+
+"But I want to speak to him. Sir Donald! Sir Donald!"
+
+Sir Donald turned round at the second summons and came towards them,
+looking rather embarrassed.
+
+"Hulloa, pater!" said Leo.
+
+Sir Donald nodded to his son with a conscientious effort to seem
+familiar and genial.
+
+"Hulloa!" he rejoined in a hollow voice.
+
+"Your boy has been instructing me in American mysteries," said Lady
+Holme. "Do take me to the ballroom, Sir Donald."
+
+Leo Ulford's good humour returned as abruptly as it had departed.
+Her glance at him, as she spoke, had seemed to hint at a secret
+understanding between them in which no one--certainly not his
+father--was included.
+
+"Pater can tell you all about the pictures," he said, with a comfortable
+assurance, which he did not strive to disguise, that she would be
+supremely bored.
+
+He stared at her hard, gave a short laugh, and lounged away.
+
+When he had gone, Sir Donald still seemed embarrassed. He looked at Lady
+Holme apologetically, and in his faded eyes she saw an expression
+that reminded her of Lady Cardington. It was surely old age asking
+forgiveness for its existence.
+
+She did not feel much pity for it, but with the woman of the world's
+natural instinct to smooth rough places--especially for a man--she began
+to devote herself to cheering Sir Donald up, as they slowly made their
+way through room after room towards the distant sound of the music.
+
+"I hear you've been plunging!" she began gaily.
+
+Sir Donald looked vague.
+
+"I'm afraid I scarcely--"
+
+"Forgive me. I catch slang from my husband. He's ruining my English. I
+mean that I hear you've been investing--shall I say your romance?--in
+a wonderful place abroad, with a fascinating name. I hope you'll get
+enormous interest."
+
+A faint colour, it was like the ghost of a blush, rose in Sir Donald's
+withered cheeks.
+
+"Ah, Mr. Carey--"
+
+He checked himself abruptly, remembering whet he had heard from Robin
+Pierce.
+
+"No, Mr. Pierce was my informant. He knows your place and says it's too
+wonderful. I adore the name."
+
+"Casa Felice. You would not advise me to change it, then?"
+
+"Change it! Why?"
+
+"Well, I--one should not, perhaps, insist beforehand that one is going
+to have happiness, which must always lie on the knees of the gods."
+
+"Oh, I believe in defiance."
+
+There was an audacious sound in her voice. Her long talk with Leo Ulford
+had given her back her belief in herself, her confidence in her beauty,
+her reliance on her youth.
+
+"You have a right to believe in it. But Casa Felice is mine."
+
+"Even to buy it was a defiance--in a way."
+
+"Perhaps so. But then--"
+
+"But then you have set out and you must not turn back, Sir Donald.
+Baptise your wonderful house yourself by filling it with happiness.
+Another gave it its name. Give it yourself the reason for the name."
+
+Happiness seemed to shine suddenly in the sound of her speaking voice,
+as it shone in her singing voice when the theme of her song was joy. Sir
+Donald's manner lost its self-consciousness, its furtive diffidence.
+
+"You--you come and give my house its real baptism," he said, with a
+flash of ardour that, issuing from him, was like fire bursting out of a
+dreary marsh land. "Will you? This August?"
+
+"But," she hesitated. "Isn't Mr. Carey coming?"
+
+At this moment they came into a big drawing-room that immediately
+preceded the ballroom, with which it communicated by an immense doorway
+hung with curtains of white velvet. They could see in the distance the
+dancers moving rather indifferently in a lancers. Lord Holme and Miss
+Schley were dancing in the set nearest to the doorway, and on the side
+that faced the drawing-room. Directly Lady Holme saw the ballroom she
+saw them. A sudden sense of revolt, the defiance of joy carried on into
+the defiance of anger, rose up in her.
+
+"If Mr. Carey is coming I'll come too, and baptise your house," she
+said.
+
+Sir Donald looked surprised, but he answered, with a swiftness that did
+not seem to belong to old age:
+
+"That is a bargain, Lady Holme. I regard that as a bargain."
+
+"I'll not go back on it."
+
+There was a hard sound in her voice.
+
+They entered the ballroom just as the band played the closing bars
+of the lancers, and the many sets began to break up and melt into a
+formless crowd which dispersed in various directions. The largest
+number of people moved towards the archway near which the Duke was still
+sitting, bravely exerting himself to be cheerful. Lady Holme and Sir
+Donald became involved in this section of the crowd, and naturally
+followed in its direction. Lord Holme and Miss Schley were at a short
+distance behind them, and Lady Holme was aware of this. The double
+defiance was still alive in her, and was strengthened by a clear sound
+which reached her ears for a moment, then was swallowed up by the hum of
+conversation from many intervening voices--the sound of the American's
+drawling tones raised to say something she could not catch. As she
+came out into the hall, close to the Duke's chair, she saw Rupert Carey
+trying to make his way into the ballroom against the stream of dancers.
+His face was flushed. There were drops of perspiration on his forehead,
+and the violent expression that was perpetually visible in his red-brown
+eyes, lighting them up as with a flame, seemed partially obscured as if
+by a haze. The violence of them was no longer vivid but glassy.
+
+Lady Holme did not notice all this. The crowd was round her, and she was
+secretly preoccupied. She merely saw that Rupert Carey was close to her,
+and she knew who was following behind her. A strong impulse came upon
+her and she yielded to it without hesitation. As she reached Rupert
+Carey she stopped and held out her hand.
+
+"Mr. Carey," she said, "I've been wanting to speak to you all the
+evening. Why didn't you ask me to dance?"
+
+She spoke very distinctly. Carey stood still and stared at her, and now
+she noticed the flush on his face and the unnatural expression in his
+eyes. She understood at once what was the matter and repented of her
+action. But it was too late to draw back. Carey stared dully for an
+instant, as if he scarcely knew who she was. Then, with a lurch, he came
+closer to her, and, with a wavering movement, tried to find her hand,
+which she had withdrawn.
+
+"Where is it?" he muttered in a thick voice. "Where is it?"
+
+He groped frantically.
+
+"Sir Donald!" Lady Holme whispered sharply, while the people nearest to
+them began to exchange glances of surprise or of amusement.
+
+She pressed his arm and he tried to draw her on. But Carey was exactly
+in front of her. It was impossible for her to escape. He found her hand
+at last, took it limply in his, bent down and began to kiss it, mumbling
+some loud but incoherent words.
+
+The Duke, who from his chair, was a witness of the scene, tried to raise
+himself up, and a vivid spot of scarlet burned in his almost transparent
+cheeks. His daughter hastened forward to stop his effort. Lady Holme
+dragged her hand away violently, and Carey suddenly burst into tears.
+Sir Donald hurried Lady Holme on, and Carey tried to follow, but was
+forcibly prevented by two men.
+
+When at length Lady Holme found herself at the other end of the great
+hall, she turned and saw her husband coming towards her with a look of
+fury on his face.
+
+"I wish to go home," she said to him in a low voice.
+
+She withdrew her hand from Sir Donald's arm and quietly bade him
+good-bye. Lord Holme did not say a word.
+
+"Where is the Duchess?" Lady Holme added. "Ah, there she is!"
+
+She saw the Duchess hurriedly going towards the place where the Duke was
+sitting, intercepted her swiftly, and bade her good-night.
+
+"Now, Fritz!" she said.
+
+She was conscious that a number of people were watching her, and her
+voice and manner were absolutely unembarrassed. A footman took the
+number of her cloak from Lord Holme and fetched the cloak. A voice cried
+in the distance, "Lord Holme's carriage!" Another, and nearer voice,
+echoed the call. She passed slowly between two lines of men over a broad
+strip of carpet to the portico, and stepped into the brougham.
+
+As it glided away into the night she heard her husband's loud breathing.
+
+He did not speak for two or three minutes, but breathed like a man who
+had been running, and moved violently in the carriage as if to keep
+still were intolerable to him. The window next to him was up. He let it
+down. Then he turned right round to his wife, who was leaning back in
+her corner wrapped up in her black cloak.
+
+"With the Duke sittin' there!" he said in a loud voice. "With the Duke
+sittin' there!"
+
+There was a sound of outrage in the voice.
+
+"Didn't I kick that sweep out of the house?" he added. "Didn't I?"
+
+"I believe you asked Mr. Carey not to call anymore."
+
+Lady Holme's voice had no excitement in it.
+
+"Asked him! I--"
+
+"Don't make such a noise, Fritz. The men will hear you."
+
+"I told him if he ever came again I'd have him put out."
+
+"Well, he never has come again."
+
+"What d'you mean by speakin' to him? What d'you mean by it?"
+
+Lady Holme knew that her husband was a thoroughly conventional man, and,
+like all conventional men, had a horror of a public scene in which any
+woman belonging to him was mixed up. Such a scene alone was quite enough
+to rouse his wrath. But there was in his present anger something deeper,
+more brutal, than any rage caused by a breach of the conventions. His
+jealousy was stirred.
+
+"He didn't speak to you. You spoke to him."
+
+Lady Holme did not deny it.
+
+"I heard every word you said," continued Lord Holme, beginning to
+breathe hard again. "I--I--"
+
+Lady Holme felt that he was longing to strike her, that if he had been
+the same man, but a collier or a labourer, born in another class of
+life, he would not have hesitated to beat her. The tradition in which he
+had been brought up controlled him. But she knew that if he could have
+beaten her he would have hated her less, that his sense of bitter wrong
+would have at once diminished. In self-control it grew. The spark rose
+to a flame.
+
+"You're a damned shameful woman!" he said.
+
+The brougham drew up softly before their house. Lord Holme, who was
+seated on the side next the house, got out first. He did not wait on the
+pavement to assist his wife, but walked up the steps, opened the door,
+and went into the hall. Lady Holme followed. She saw her husband, with
+the light behind him, standing with his hand on the handle of the hall
+door. For an instant she thought that he was going to shut her out. He
+actually pushed the door till the light was almost hidden. Then he flung
+it open with a bang, threw down his hat and strode upstairs.
+
+If he had shut her out! She found herself wondering what would have
+become of her, where she would have gone. She would have had to go to
+the Coburg, or to Claridge's, without a maid, without luggage. As she
+slowly came upstairs she heard her husband go into the drawing-room. Was
+he waiting for her there? or did he wish to avoid her? When she
+reached the broad landing she hesitated. She was half inclined to go in
+audaciously, to laugh in his face; turn his fury into ridicule, tell him
+she was the sort of woman who is born to do as she likes, to live as she
+chooses, to think of nothing but her own will, consult nothing but her
+whims of the moment. But she went on and into her bedroom.
+
+Josephine was there and began to take the diamonds out of her hair. Lady
+Holme did not say a word. She was listening intently for the sound of
+any movement below. She heard nothing. When she was undressed, and there
+was nothing more for the maid to do, she began to feel uneasy, as if
+she would rather not dismiss the girl. But it was very late. Josephine
+strangled her yawns with difficulty. There was no excuse for keeping her
+up any longer.
+
+"You can go."
+
+The maid went out, leaving Lady Holme standing in the middle of the big
+bedroom. Next to it on one side was Lord Holme's dressing-room. On the
+other side there was a door leading into Lady Holme's boudoir. Almost
+directly after Josephine had gone Lady Holme heard the outer door of
+this room opened, and the heavy step of her husband. It moved about
+the room, stopped, moved about again. What could he be doing? She stood
+where she was, listening. Suddenly the door between the rooms was thrown
+open and Lord Holme appeared.
+
+"Where's the red book?" he said.
+
+"The red book!"
+
+"Where is it? D'you hear?"
+
+"What do you want it for?"
+
+"That sweep's address."
+
+"What are you going to do? Write to him?"
+
+"Write to him!" said Lord Holme, with bitter contempt. "I'm goin' to
+thrash him. Where is it?"
+
+"You are going now?"
+
+"I've not come up to answer questions. I've come for the red book. Where
+is it?"
+
+"The little drawer at the top on the right hand of the writing-table."
+
+Lord Holme turned back into the boudoir, went to the writing-table,
+found the book, opened it, found the address and wrote it down on a bit
+of paper. He folded the paper up anyhow and thrust it into his waistcoat
+pocket. Then, without saying another word to his wife, or looking at
+her, he went out and down the staircase.
+
+She followed him on to the landing, and stood there till she heard the
+hall door shut with a bang.
+
+A clock below struck four. She went back into the bedroom and sank into
+an armchair.
+
+A slight sense of confusion floated over her mind for a moment, like a
+cloud. She was not accustomed to scenes. There had been one certainly
+when Rupert Carey was forbidden to come to the house any more, but it
+had been brief, and she had not been present at it. She had only heard
+of it afterwards. Lord Holme had been angry then, and she had rather
+liked his anger. She took it as, in some degree, a measure of his
+attachment to her. And then she had had no feeling of being in the wrong
+or of humiliation. She had been charming to Carey, as she was charming
+to all men. He had lost his head. He had mistaken the relations existing
+between her and her husband, and imagined that such a woman as she was
+must be unhappily mated with such a man as Lord Holme. The passionate
+desire to console a perfectly-contented woman had caused him to go too
+far, and bring down upon himself a fiat of exile, which he could not
+defy since Lady Holme permitted it to go forth, and evidently was not
+rendered miserable by it. So the acquaintance with Rupert Carey had
+ceased, and life had slipped along once more on wheels covered with
+india-rubber tyres.
+
+And now she had renewed the acquaintance publicly and with disastrous
+results.
+
+As she sat there she began to wonder at herself, at the strength of her
+temper, the secret violence of her nature. She had yielded like a
+child to a sudden impulse. She had not thought of consequences. She had
+ignored her worldly knowledge. She had considered nothing, but had acted
+abruptly, as any ignorant, uneducated woman might have acted. She had
+been the slave of a mood. Or had she been the slave of another woman--of
+a woman whom she despised?
+
+Miss Schley had certainly been the cause of the whole affair. Lady Holme
+had spoken to Rupert Carey merely because she knew that her husband was
+immediately behind her with the American. There had been within her at
+that moment something of a broad, comprehensive feeling, mingled with
+the more limited personal feeling of anger against another woman's
+successful impertinence, a sentiment of revolt in which womanhood seemed
+to rise up against the selfish tyrannies of men. As she had walked
+in the crowd, and heard for an instant Miss Schley's drawlling voice
+speaking to her husband, she had felt as if the forbidding of the
+acquaintance between herself and Rupert Carey had been an act of
+tyranny, as if the acquaintance between Miss Schley and her husband were
+a worse act of tyranny. The feeling was wholly unreasonable, of course.
+How could Lord Holme know that she wished to impose a veto, even as
+he had? And what reason was there for such a veto? That lay deep down
+within her as woman's instinct. No man could have understood it.
+
+And now Lord Holme had gone out in the dead of the night to thrash
+Carey.
+
+She began to think about Carey.
+
+How disgusting he had been. A drunken man must be one of two
+things--either terrible or absurd. Carey had been absurd--disgusting
+and absurd. It had been better for him if he had been terrible. But
+mumblings and tears! She remembered what she had said of Carey to Robin
+Pierce--that something in his eyes, one of those expressions which are
+the children of the eyes, or of the lines about the eyes, told her that
+he was capable of doing something great. What an irony that her remark
+to Robin had been succeeded by such a scene! And she heard again the
+ugly sound of Carey's incoherent exclamations, and felt again the limp
+clasp of his hot, weak hand, and saw again the tears running over his
+flushed, damp face. It was all very nauseous. And yet--had she been
+wrong in what she had said of him? Did she even think that she had been
+wrong now, after what had passed?
+
+What kind of great action had she thought he would be capable of if a
+chance to do something great were thrown in his way? She said to herself
+that she had spoken at random, as one perpetually speaks in Society. And
+then she remembered Carey's eyes. They were ugly eyes. She had always
+thought them ugly. Yet, now and then, there was something in them,
+something to hold a woman--no, perhaps not that--but something to
+startle a woman, to make her think, wonder, even to make her trust. And
+the scene which had just occurred, with all its weakness, its fatuity,
+its maundering display of degradation and the inability of any
+self-government, had not somehow destroyed the impression made upon
+Lady Holme by that something in Carey's eyes. What she had said to Robin
+Pierce she might not choose ever to say again. She would not choose
+ever to say it again--of that she was certain--but she had not ceased to
+think it.
+
+A conviction based upon no evidence that could be brought forward to
+convince anyone is the last thing that can be destroyed in a woman's
+heart.
+
+It was nearly six o'clock when Lady Holme heard a step coming up the
+stairs. She was still sitting in the deep chair, and had scarcely moved.
+The step startled her. She put her hands on the arms of the chair and
+leaned forward. The step passed her bedroom. She heard the door of the
+dressing-room opened and then someone moving about.
+
+"Fritz!" she called. "Fritz!"
+
+There was no answer. She got up and went quickly to the dressing-room.
+Her husband was there in his shirt sleeves. His evening coat and
+waistcoat were lying half on a chair, half on the floor, and he was in
+the act of unfastening his collar. She looked into his face, trying to
+read it.
+
+"Well?" she said. "Well?"
+
+"Go to bed!" he said brutally.
+
+"What have you done?"
+
+"That's my business. Go to bed. D'you hear?"
+
+She hesitated. Then she said:
+
+"How dare you speak to me like that? Have you seen Mr. Carey?"
+
+Lord Holme suddenly took his wife by the shoulders; pushed her out of
+the room, shut the door, and locked it.
+
+They always slept in the same bedroom. Was he not going to bed at all?
+What had happened? Lady Holme could not tell from his face or manner
+anything of what had occurred. She looked at her clock and saw her
+husband had been out of the house for two hours. Indignation and
+curiosity fought within her; and she became conscious of an excitement
+such as she had never felt before. Sleep was impossible, but she got
+into bed and lay there listening to the noises made by her husband in
+his dressing-room. She could just hear them faintly through the door.
+Presently they ceased. A profound silence reigned. There was a sofa
+in the dressing-room. Could he be trying to sleep on it? Such a thing
+seemed incredible to her. For Lord Holme, although he could rough it
+when he was shooting or hunting, at home or abroad, and cared little for
+inconvenience when there was anything to kill, was devoted to comfort in
+ordinary life, and extremely exigent in his own houses. For nothing, for
+nobody, had Lady Holme ever known him to allow himself to be put out.
+
+She strained her ears as she lay in bed. For a long time the silence
+lasted. She began to think her husband must have left the dressing-room,
+when she heard a noise as if something--some piece of furniture--had
+been kicked, and then a stentorian "Damn!"
+
+Suddenly she burst out laughing. She shook against the pillows. She
+laughed and laughed weakly; helplessly, till the tears ran down her
+cheeks. And with those tears ran away her anger, the hot, strained
+sensation that had been within her even since the scene at Arkell House.
+If she had womanly pride it melted ignominiously. If she had feminine
+dignity--that pure and sacred panoply which man ignores at his own
+proper peril--it disappeared. The "poor old Fritz" feeling, which was
+the most human, simple, happy thing in her heart, started into vivacity
+as she realised the long legs flowing into air over the edge of the
+short sofa, the pent-up fury--fury of the too large body on the
+too small resting-place--which found a partial vent in the hallowed
+objurgation of the British Philistine.
+
+With every moment that she lay in the big bed she was punishing
+Fritz. She nestled down among the pillows. She stretched out her limbs
+luxuriously. How easy it was to punish a man! Lying there she recalled
+her husband's words, each detail of his treatment of her since she had
+spoken to Carey. He had called her "a damned shameful woman." That was
+of all the worst offence. She told herself that she ought to, that
+she must, for that expression alone, hate Fritz for ever. And then,
+immediately, she knew that she had forgiven it already, without effort,
+without thought.
+
+She understood the type with which she had to deal, the absurd
+boyishness that was linked with the brutality of it, the lack of mind
+to give words their true, their inmost meaning. Words are instruments of
+torture, or the pattering confetti of a carnival, not by themselves but
+by the mind that sends them forth. Fritz's exclamation might have roused
+eternal enmity in her if it had been uttered by another man. Coming from
+Fritz it won its pardon easily by having a brother, "Damn."
+
+She wondered how long her husband would be ruled by his sense of
+outrage.
+
+Towards seven she heard another movement; another indignant exclamation,
+then the creak of furniture, a step, a rattling at the door. She turned
+on her side towards the wall, shut her eyes and breathed lightly and
+regularly. The key revolved, the door opened and closed, and she heard
+feet shuffling cautiously over the carpet. A moment and Fritz was in
+bed. Another moment, a long sigh, and he was asleep.
+
+Lady Holme still lay awake. Now that her attention was no longer fixed
+upon her husband's immediate proceedings she began to wonder again what
+had happened between him and Rupert Carey. She would find out in the
+morning.
+
+And presently she too slept.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX
+
+IN the morning Lord Holme woke very late and in a different humour. Lady
+Holme was already up, sitting by a little table and pouring out tea,
+when he stretched himself, yawned, turned over, uttered two or three
+booming, incohorent exclamations, and finally raised himself on one arm,
+exhibiting a touzled head and a pair of blinking eyes, stared solemnly
+at his wife's white figure and at the tea-table, and ejaculated:
+
+"Eh?"
+
+"Tea?" she returned, lifting up the silver teapot and holding it towards
+him with an encouraging, half-playful gesture.
+
+Lord Holme yawned again, put up his hands to his hair, and then looked
+steadily at the teapot, which his wife was moving about in the sunbeams
+that were shining in at the window. The morning was fine.
+
+"Tea, Fritz?"
+
+He smiled and began to roll out of bed. But the action woke up his
+memory, and when he was on his feet he looked at his wife again more
+doubtfully. She saw that he was beginning, sleepily but definitely,
+to consider whether he should go on being absolutely furious about the
+events of the preceding night, and acted with promptitude.
+
+"Don't be frightened," she said quickly. "I've made up my mind to
+forgive you. You're only a great schoolboy after all. Come along."
+
+She began to pour out the tea. It made a pleasant little noise falling
+into the cup. The sun was wonderfully bright in the pretty room, almost
+Italian in its golden warmth. Lady Holme's black Pomeranian, Pixie,
+stood on its hind legs to greet him. He came up to the sofa, still
+looking undecided, but with a wavering light of dawning satisfaction in
+his eyes.
+
+"You behaved damned badly last night," he growled.
+
+He sat down beside his wife with a bump. She put up her hand to his
+rough, brown cheek.
+
+"We both behaved atrociously," she answered. "There's your tea."
+
+She poured in the cream and buttered a thin piece of toast. Lord Holme
+sipped. As he put the cup down she held the piece of toast up to his
+mouth. He took a bite.
+
+"And we both do the Christian act and forgive each other," she added.
+
+He leaned back. Sleep was flowing away from him, full consciousness of
+life and events returning to him.
+
+"What made you speak to that feller?" he said.
+
+"Drink your tea. I don't know. He looked miserable at being avoided,
+and--"
+
+"Miserable! He was drunk. He's done for himself in London, and pretty
+near done for you too."
+
+As he thought about it all a cloud began to settle over his face. Lady
+Holme saw it and said:
+
+"That depends on you, Fritz."
+
+She nestled against him, put her hand over his, and kept on lifting his
+hand softly and then letting it fall on his knee, as she went on:
+
+"That all depends on you."
+
+"How?"
+
+He began to look at her hand and his, following their movements almost
+like a child.
+
+"If we are all right together, obviously all right, very, very
+par-ti-cu-lar-ly all right--voyez vous, mon petit chou?--they will think
+nothing of it. 'Poor Mr. Carey! What a pity the Duke's champagne is so
+good!' That's what they'll say. But if we--you and I--are not on
+perfect terms, if you behave like a bear that's been sitting on a wasps'
+nest--why then they'll say--they'll say--"
+
+"What'll they say?"
+
+"They'll say, 'That was really a most painful scene at the Duke's. She's
+evidently been behaving quite abominably. Those yellow women always
+bring about all the tragedies--'"
+
+"Yellow women!" Lord Holme ejaculated.
+
+He looked hard at his wife. It was evident that his mind was tacking.
+
+"Miss Schley heard what you said to the feller," he added.
+
+"People who never speak hear everything--naturally."
+
+"How d'you mean--never speak? Why, she's full of talk."
+
+"How well she listened to him!" was Lady Holme's mental comment.
+
+"If half the world heard it doesn't matter if you and I choose it
+shouldn't. Unless--"
+
+"Unless what?"
+
+"Unless you did anything last night--afterwards--that will make a
+scandal?"
+
+"Ah!"
+
+"Did you?"
+
+"That's all right."
+
+He applied himself with energy to the toast. Lady Holme recognised, with
+a chagrin which she concealed, that Lord Holme was not going to allow
+himself to be "managed" into any revelation. She recognised it so
+thoroughly that she left the subject at once.
+
+"We'd better forgive and forget," she said. "After all, we are married
+and I suppose we must stick together."
+
+There was a clever note of regret in her voice.
+
+"Are you sorry?" Lord Holme said, with a manner that suggested a
+readiness to be surly.
+
+"For what?"
+
+"That we're married?"
+
+She sat calmly considering.
+
+"Am I? Well, I must think. It's so difficult to be sure. I must compare
+you with other men--"
+
+"If it comes to that, I might do a bit of comparin' too."
+
+"I should be the last to prevent you, old boy. But I'm sure you've often
+done it already and always made up your mind afterwards that she wasn't
+quite up to the marrying mark."
+
+"Who wasn't?"
+
+"The other--horrid creature."
+
+He could not repress a chuckle.
+
+"You're deuced conceited," he said.
+
+"You've made me so."
+
+"I--how?"
+
+"By marrying me first and adoring me afterwards."
+
+They had finished tea and were no longer preoccupied with cups and
+saucers. It was very bright in the room, very silent. Lord Holme looked
+at his wife and remembered how much she was admired by other men, how
+many men would give--whatever men are ready to give--to see her as she
+was just then. It occurred to him that he would have been rather a fool
+if he had yielded to his violent impulse and shut her out of the house
+the previous night.
+
+"You're never to speak to that cad again," he said. "D'you hear?"
+
+"Whisper it close in my ear and I'll try to hear. Your voice is
+so--what's your expression--so infernally soft."
+
+He put his great arm round her.
+
+"D'you hear?"
+
+"I'm trying."
+
+"I'll make you."
+
+Whether Lord Holme succeeded or not, Lady Holme had no opportunity--even
+if she desired it--of speaking to Rupert Carey for some time. He left
+London and went up to the North to stay with his mother. The only person
+he saw before he went was Robin Pierce. He came round to Half Moon
+Street early on the afternoon of the day after the Arkell House Ball.
+Robin was at home and Carey walked in with his usual decision. He was
+very pale, and his face looked very hard. Robin received him coldly
+and did not ask him to sit down. That was not necessary, of course. But
+Robin was standing by the door and did not move back into the room.
+
+"I'm going North to-night," said Carey.
+
+"Are you?"
+
+"Yes. If you don't mind I'll sit down."
+
+Robin said nothing. Carey threw himself into an armchair.
+
+"Going to see the mater. A funny thing--but she's always glad to see
+me."
+
+"Why not?"
+
+"Mothers have a knack that way. Lucky for sons like me."
+
+There was intense bitterness in his voice, but there was a sound of
+tenderness too. Robin shut the door but did not sit down.
+
+"Are you going to be in the country long?"
+
+"Don't know. What time did you leave Arkell House last night?"
+
+"Not till after Lady Holme left."
+
+"Oh!"
+
+He was silent for a moment, biting his red moustache.
+
+"Were you in the hall after the last lancers?"
+
+"No."
+
+"You weren't?"
+
+He spoke quickly, with a sort of relief, hesitated then added
+sardonically:
+
+"But of course you know--and much worse than the worst. The art of
+conversation isn't dead yet, whatever the--perhaps you saw me being got
+out?"
+
+"No, I didn't."
+
+"But you do know?"
+
+"Naturally."
+
+"I say, I wish you'd let me have--"
+
+He checked himself abruptly, and muttered:
+
+"Good God! What a brute I am."
+
+He sprang up and walked about the room. Presently he stopped in front of
+the statuette of the "_Danseuse de Tunisie_."
+
+"Is it the woman that does it all, or the fan?" he said. "I don't know.
+Sometimes I think it's one, and sometimes the other. Without the fan
+there's purity, what's meant from the beginning--"
+
+"By whom?" said Robin. "I thought you were an atheist?"
+
+"Oh, God! I don't know what I am."
+
+He turned away from the statuette.
+
+"With the fan there's so much more than purity, than what was meant to
+complete us--as devils--men. But--mothers don't carry the fan. And I'm
+going North to-night."
+
+"Do you mean to say that Lady Holme--?"
+
+Robin's voice was stern.
+
+"Why did she say that to me?"
+
+"What did she say?"
+
+"That she wished to speak to me, to dance with me."
+
+"She said that? How can you know?"
+
+"Oh, I wasn't so drunk that I couldn't hear the voice from Eden. Pierce,
+you know her. She likes you. Tell her to forgive as much as she can.
+Will you? And tell her not to carry the fan again when fools like me are
+about."
+
+And then, without more words, he went out of the room and left Robin
+standing alone.
+
+Robin looked at the statuette, and remembered what Sir Donald Ulford
+had said directly he saw it--"Forgive me, that fan makes that statuette
+wicked."
+
+"Poor old Carey!" he murmured.
+
+His indignation at Carey's conduct, which had been hot, had nearly died
+away.
+
+"If I had told him what she said about him at supper!" he thought.
+
+And then he began to wonder whether Lady Holme had changed her mind on
+that subject. Surely she must have changed it. But one never knew--with
+women. He took up his hat and gloves and went out. If Lady Holme was in
+he meant to give her Carey's message. It was impossible to be jealous of
+Carey now.
+
+Lady Holme was not in.
+
+As Robin walked away from Cadogan Square he was not sure whether he was
+glad or sorry that he had not been able to see her.
+
+After his cup of early morning tea Lord Holme had seemed to be "dear
+old Fritz" again, and Lady Holme felt satisfied with herself despite the
+wagging tongues of London. She knew she had done an incautious thing.
+She knew, too, that Carey had failed her. Her impulse had been to use
+him as a weapon. He had proved a broken reed. And this failure on his
+part was likely to correct for ever her incautious tendencies. That
+was what she told herself, with some contempt for men. She did not
+tell herself that the use to which she had intended to put Carey was an
+unworthy one. Women as beautiful, and as successful in their beauty, as
+she was seldom tell themselves these medicinal truths.
+
+She went about as usual, and on several occasions took Lord Holme with
+her. And though she saw a light of curiosity in many eyes, and saw lips
+almost forced open by the silent questions lurking within many minds,
+it was as she had said it would be. The immediate future had been in
+Fritz's hands, and he had made it safe enough.
+
+He had made it safe. Even the Duchess of Arkell was quite charming, and
+laid the whole burden of blame--where it always ought to be laid,
+of course--upon the man's shoulders. Rupert Carey was quite done
+for socially. Everyone said so. Even Upper Bohemia thought blatant
+intemperance--in a Duke's house--an unnecessary defiance flung at the
+Blue Ribbon Army. Only Amalia Wolfstein, who had never succeeded in
+getting an invitation to Arkell House, remarked that "It was probably
+the champagne's fault. She had always noticed that where the host and
+hostess were dry the champagne was apt to be sweet."
+
+Yes, Fritz had made it safe, but:
+
+Circumstances presently woke in Lady Holme's mind a rather disagreeable
+suspicion that though Fritz had "come round" with such an admirable
+promptitude he had reserved to himself a right to retaliate, that he
+perhaps presumed to fancy that her defiant action, and its very public
+and unpleasant result, gave to him a greater license than he had
+possessed before.
+
+Some days after the early morning tea Lord Holme said to his wife:
+
+"I say, Vi, we've got nothing on the first, have we?"
+
+There was a perceptible pause before she replied.
+
+"Yes, we have. We've accepted a dinner at Brayley House."
+
+Lord Holme looked exceedingly put out.
+
+"Brayley House. What rot!" he exclaimed. "I hate those hind-leg affairs.
+Why on earth did you accept it?"
+
+"Dear boy, you told me to. But why?"
+
+"Why what?"
+
+"Why are you so anxious to be free for the first?"
+
+"Well, it's Miss Schley's _debut_ at the British. Everyone's goin' and
+Laycock says--"
+
+"I'm not very interested in Mr. Laycock's aphorisms, Fritz. I prefer
+yours, I truly do."
+
+"Oh, well, I'm as good as Laycock, I know. Still--"
+
+"You're a thousand times better. And so everybody's going, on Miss
+Schley's first night? I only wish we could, but we can't. Let's put up
+with number two. We're free on the second."
+
+Lord Holme did not look at all appeased.
+
+"That's not the same thing," he said.
+
+"What's the difference? She doesn't change the play, I suppose?"
+
+"No. But naturally on the first night she wants all her friends to come
+up to the scratch, muster round--don't you know?--and give her a hand."
+
+"And she thinks your hand, being enormous, would be valuable? But we
+can't throw over Brayley House."
+
+Lord Holme's square jaw began to work, a sure sign of acute irritation.
+
+"If there's a dull, dreary house in London, it's Brayley House," he
+grumbled. "The cookin's awful--poison--and the wine's worse. Why, last
+time Laycock was there they actually gave him--"
+
+"Poor dear Mr. Laycock! Did they really? But what can we do? I'm sure I
+don't want to be poisoned either. I love life."
+
+She was looking brilliant. Lord Holme began to straddle his legs.
+
+"And there's the box!" he said. "A box next the stage that holds six in
+a row can't stand empty on a first night, eh? It'd throw a damper on the
+whole house."
+
+"I'm afraid I don't quite understand. What box?"
+
+"Hang it all!--ours."
+
+"I didn't know we had a box for this important social function."
+
+Lady Holme really made a great effort to keep the ice out of her voice,
+but one or two fragments floated in nevertheless.
+
+"Well, I tell you I've taken a box and asked Laycock--"
+
+The reiterated mention of this hallowed name was a little too much for
+Lady Holme's equanimity.
+
+"If Mr. Laycock's going the box won't be empty. So that's all right,"
+she rejoined. "Mr. Laycock will make enough noise to give the critics a
+lead. And I suppose that's all Miss Schley wants."
+
+"But it isn't!" said Lord Holme, violently letting himself down at the
+knees and shooting himself up again.
+
+"What does she want?"
+
+"She wants you to be there."
+
+"Me! Why?"
+
+"Because she's taken a deuce of a fancy to you."
+
+"Really!"
+
+An iceberg had entered the voice now.
+
+"Yes, thinks you the smartest woman in London, and all that. So you
+are."
+
+"I'm very sorry, but even the smartest woman in London can't throw over
+the Brayley's. Take another box for the second."
+
+Lord Holme looked fearfully sulky and lounged out of the room.
+
+On the following morning he strode into Lady Holme's boudoir about
+twelve with a radiant face.
+
+"It's all right!" he exclaimed. "Talk of diplomatists! I ought to be an
+ambassador."
+
+He flung himself into a chair, grinning with satisfaction like a
+schoolboy.
+
+"What is it?" asked Lady Holme, looking up from her writing-table.
+
+"I've been to Lady Brayley, explained the whole thing, and got us both
+off. After all, she was a friend of my mother's, and knew me in kilts
+and all that, so she ought to be ready to do me a favour. She looked
+a bit grim, but she's done it. You've--only got to tip her a note of
+thanks."
+
+"You're mad then, Fritz!"
+
+Lady Holme stood up suddenly.
+
+"Never saner."
+
+He put one hand into the breast pocket of his coat and pulled out an
+envelope.
+
+"Here's what she says to you."
+
+Lady Holme tore the note open.
+
+
+            "BRAYLEY HOUSE, W.
+
+  "DEAR VIOLA,--Holme tells me you made a mistake when you accepted
+  my invitation for the first, and that you have long been pledged
+  to be present on that date at some theatrical performance or other.
+  I am sorry I did not know sooner, but of course I release you with
+  pleasure from your engagement with me, and I have already filled up
+  your places.--Believe me, yours always sincerely,
+
+            "MARTHA BRAYLEY."
+
+
+Lady Holme read this note carefully, folded it up, laid it quietly on
+the writing-table and repeated:
+
+"You're mad, Fritz."
+
+"What d'you mean--mad?"
+
+"You've made Martha Brayley my enemy for life."
+
+"Rubbish!"
+
+"I beg your pardon. And for--for--"
+
+She stopped. It was wiser not to go on. Perhaps her face spoke for her,
+even to so dull an observer as Lord Holme, for he suddenly said, with a
+complete change of tone:
+
+"I forgave you about Carey."
+
+"Oh, I see! You want a _quid pro quo_. Thank you, Fritz."
+
+"Don't forget to tip Lady Brayley a note of thanks," he said rather
+loudly, getting up from his chair.
+
+"Oh, thanks! You certainly ought to be an ambassador--at the court of
+some savage monarch."
+
+He said nothing, but walked out of the room whistling the refrain about
+Ina.
+
+When he had gone Lady Holme sat down and wrote two notes. One was to
+Lady Brayley and was charmingly apologetic, saying that the confusion
+was entirely owing to Fritz's muddle-headedness, and that she was in
+despair at her misfortune--which was almost literally true. The other
+was to Sir Donald Ulford, begging him to join them in their box on the
+first, and asking whether it was possible to persuade Mr. and Mrs. Leo
+Ulford to come with him. If he thought so she would go at once and leave
+cards on Mrs. Ulford, whom she was longing to know.
+
+Both notes went off by hand before lunch.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X
+
+THE Ulfords accepted for the first. Lady Holme left cards on Mrs.
+Leo and told her husband that the box was filled up. He received the
+information with indifference. So long as his wife was there to please
+Miss Schley, and Mr. Laycock to "give her a hand and show 'em all
+whether she was popular," he was satisfied. Having gained his point,
+he was once again in excellent humour. Possibly Lady Holme would have
+appreciated his large gaieties more if she had not divined their cause.
+But she expressed no dissatisfaction with them, and indeed increased
+them by her own brilliant serenity during the days that intervened
+between the Martha Brayley incident and the first night.
+
+Lord Holme had no suspicion that during these days she was inwardly
+debating whether she would go to the theatre or not.
+
+It would be very easy to be unwell. She was going out incessantly and
+could be over-fatigued. She could have woman's great stand-by in moments
+of crisis--a bad attack of neuralgia. It was the simplest matter in the
+world. The only question was--all things considered, was it worth while?
+By "all things considered" she meant Leo Ulford. The touch of Fritz in
+him made him a valuable ally at this moment. Fritz and Miss Schley were
+not going to have things quite all their own way. And then Mrs. Leo! She
+would put Fritz next the ear-trumpet. She had enough sense of humour to
+smile to herself at the thought of him there. On the whole, she fancied
+the neuralgia would not attack her at the critical instant.
+
+Only when she thought of what her husband had said about the American's
+desire for her presence did she hesitate again. Her suspicions were
+aroused. Miss Schley was not anxious that she should be conspicuously
+in the theatre merely because she was the smartest woman in London. That
+was certain. Besides, she was not the smartest woman in London. She was
+far too well-born to be that in these great days of the _demi-mondaine_.
+She remembered Robin Pierce's warning at the Arkell House
+ball--"Consider yourselves enemies for no reasons or secret woman's
+reasons. It's safer."
+
+When do women want the bulky, solid reasons obtusely demanded by men
+before they can be enemies? Where man insists on an insult, a blow, they
+will be satisfied with a look--perhaps not even at them but only at the
+skirt of their gown--with a turn of the head, with nothing at all. For
+what a man calls nothing can be the world and all that there is in it
+to a woman. Lady Holme knew that she and the American had been enemies
+since the moment when the latter had moved with the tiny steps that
+so oddly caricatured her own individual walk down the stairs at the
+Carlton. She wanted no tiresome reasons; nor did Miss Schley. Robin was
+right, of course. He understood women. But then--?
+
+Should she go to the theatre?
+
+The night came and she went. Whether an extraordinary white lace gown,
+which arrived from Paris in the morning, and fitted too perfectly for
+words, had anything to do with the eventual decision was not known to
+anybody but herself.
+
+Boxes are no longer popular in London except at the Opera. The British
+Theatre was new, and the management, recognising that people prefer
+stalls, had given up all the available space to them, and only left room
+for two large boxes, which faced each other on a level with the dress
+circle and next the stage. Lord Holme had one. Mrs. Wolfstein had taken
+the other.
+
+Miss Schley's personal success in London brought together a rather
+special audience. There were some of the usual people who go to first
+nights--critics, ladies who describe dresses, fashionable lawyers and
+doctors. But there were also numbers of people who are scarcely ever
+seen on these occasions, people who may be found in the ground and grand
+tier boxes at Covent Garden during the summer season. These thronged the
+stalls, and every one of them was a dear friend of Lady Holme's.
+Among them were Lady Cardington, Lady Manby, Sally Perceval with her
+magnificently handsome and semi-idiotic husband, old Lady Blower, in a
+green cap that suggested the bathing season, Robin Pierce and Mr. Bry.
+Smart Americans were scattered all over the house. Most of them had
+already seen the play in New York during the preceding winter, and
+nearly everyone in the stalls had seen the French original in Paris. The
+French piece had been quite shocking and quite delicious. Every Royalty
+_de passage_ in Paris had been to see it, and one wandering monarch
+had gone three nights running, and had laughed until his
+gentleman-in-waiting thought the heir to his throne was likely to
+succeed much sooner than was generally expected.
+
+The Holmes came in early. Lady Holme hated arriving anywhere early, but
+Lord Holme was in such a prodigious fuss about being in plenty of time
+to give Miss Schley a "rousin' welcome," that she yielded to his bass
+protestations, and had the satisfaction of entering their box at least
+seven minutes before the curtain went up. The stalls, of course, were
+empty, and as they gradually filled she saw the faces of her friends
+looking up at her with an amazement that under other circumstances might
+have been amusing, but under these was rather irritating. Mr. Laycock
+arrived two minutes after they did, and was immediately engaged in a
+roaring conversation by Fritz. He was a man who talked a great deal
+without having anything to say, who had always had much success with
+women, perhaps because he had always treated them very badly, who
+dressed, danced and shot well, and who had never, even for a moment,
+really cared for anyone but himself. A common enough type.
+
+Sir Donald appeared next, looking even more ghostly than usual. He sat
+down by Lady Holme, a little behind her. He seemed depressed, but the
+expression in his pale blue eyes when they first rested upon her made
+her thoroughly realise one thing--that it was one of her conquering
+nights. His eyes travelled quickly from her face to her throat, to
+her gown. She wore no jewels. Sir Donald had a fastidious taste in
+beauty--the taste that instinctively rejects excess of any kind. Her
+appeal to it had never been so great as to-night. She knew it, and felt
+that she had never found Sir Donald so attractive as to-night.
+
+Mr. and Mrs. Ulford came in just as the curtain was going up, and the
+introductions had to be gone through with a certain mysterious caution,
+and the sitting arrangements made with as little noise as possible. Lady
+Holme managed them deftly. Mr. Laycock sat nearest the stage, then Leo
+Ulford next to her, on her right. Sir Donald was on her other side,
+Mrs. Leo sat in the place of honour, with Lord Holme between her and Sir
+Donald. She was intensely pink. Even her gown was of that colour, and
+she wore a pink aigrette in her hair, fastened with a diamond ornament.
+Her thin, betraying throat was clasped by the large dog-collar she had
+worn at Arkell House. She cast swift, bird-like glances, full of a
+sort of haggard inquiry, towards Lady Holme as she settled down in
+her arm-chair in the corner. Lord Holme looked at her and at her
+ear-trumpet, and Lady Holme was glad she had decided not to have
+neuralgia. There are little compensations about all women even in the
+tiresome moments of their lives. Whether this moment was going to be
+tiresome or not she could not yet decide.
+
+The Wolfstein party had come in at the same time as the Leo Ulfords,
+and the box opposite presented an interesting study of Jewish types.
+For Mrs. Wolfstein and "Henry" were accompanied by four immensely
+rich compatriots, three of whom were members of the syndicate that was
+"backing" Miss Schley. The fourth was the wife of one of them, and a
+cousin of Henry's, whom she resembled, but on a greatly enlarged
+scale. Both she and Amalia blazed with jewels, and both were slightly
+overdressed and looked too animated. Lady Holme saw Sir Donald glance at
+them, and then again at her, and began to think more definitely that the
+evening would not be tiresome.
+
+Leo Ulford seemed at present forced into a certain constraint by the
+family element in the box. He looked at his father sideways, then at
+Lady Holme, drummed one hand on his knee, and was evidently uncertain of
+himself. During the opening scene of the play he found an opportunity to
+whisper to Lady Holme:
+
+"I never can talk when pater's there!"
+
+She whispered back:
+
+"We mustn't talk now."
+
+Then she looked towards the stage with apparent interest. Mrs. Leo sat
+sideways with her trumpet lifted up towards her ear, Lord Holme had
+his eyes fixed on the stage, and held his hands ready for the "rousin'
+welcome." Mr. Laycock, at the end of the row, was also all attention.
+Lady Holme glanced from one to the other, and murmured to Sir Donald
+with a smile:
+
+"I think we shall find to-night that the claque is not abolished in
+England."
+
+He raised his eyebrows and looked distressed.
+
+"I have very little hope of her acting," he murmured back.
+
+Lady Holme put her fan to her lips.
+
+"'Sh! No sacrilege!" she said in an under voice.
+
+She saw Leo Ulford shoot an angry glance at his father. Mrs. Wolfstein
+nodded and smiled at her from the opposite box, and it struck Lady Holme
+that her smile was more definitely malicious than usual, and that her
+large black eyes were full of a sort of venomous anticipation. Mrs.
+Wolfstein had at all times an almost frightfully expressive face.
+To-night it had surely discarded every shred of reticence, and
+proclaimed an eager expectation of something which Lady Holme could not
+divine, but which must surely be very disagreeable to her. What could it
+possibly be? And was it in any way connected with Miss Schley's anxiety
+that she should be there that night? She began to wish that the American
+would appear, but Miss Schley had nothing to do in the first act till
+near the end, and then had only one short scene to bring down the
+curtain. Lady Holme knew this because she had seen the play in Paris.
+She thought the American version very dull. The impropriety had been
+removed and with it all the fun. People began to yawn and to assume
+the peculiar blank expression--the bankrupt face--that is indicative of
+thwarted anticipation. Only the Americans who had seen the piece in New
+York preserved their lively looks and an appearance of being on the _qui
+vive_.
+
+Lord Holme's blunt brown features gradually drooped, seemed to become
+definitely elongated. As time went on he really began to look almost
+lantern-jawed. He bent forward and tried to catch Mr. Laycock's eye and
+to telegraph an urgent question, but only succeeded in meeting the surly
+blue eyes of Leo Ulford, whom he met to-night for the first time. In
+his despair he turned towards Mrs. Leo, and at once encountered the
+ear-trumpet. He glanced at it with apprehension, and, after a moment of
+vital hesitation, was about to pour into it the provender, "Have you
+any notion when she's comin' on?" when there was a sudden rather languid
+slapping of applause, and he jerked round hastily to find Miss Schley
+already on the stage and welcomed without any of the assistance which he
+was specially there to give. He lifted belated hands, but met a glance
+from his wife which made him drop them silently. There was a satire in
+her eyes, a sort of humorous, half-urging patronage that pierced the
+hide of his self-satisfied and lethargic mind. She seemed sitting there
+ready to beat time to his applause, nod her head to it as to a childish
+strain of jigging music. And this apparent preparation for a semi-comic,
+semi-pitiful benediction sent his hands suddenly to his knees.
+
+He stared at the stage. Miss Schley was looking wonderfully like Viola,
+he thought, on the instant, more like than she did in real life; like
+Viola gone to the bad, though become a very reticent, yet very definite,
+_cocotte_. There was not much in the scene, but Miss Schley, without
+apparent effort and with a profound demureness, turned the dulness of
+it into something that was--not French, certainly not that--but that was
+quite as outrageous as the French had been, though in a different way;
+something without definite nationality, but instinct with the slyness
+of acute and unscrupulous womankind. The extraordinary thing was the
+marvellous resemblance this acute and unscrupulous womanhood bore to
+Lady Holme's, even through all its obvious difference from hers. All her
+little mannerisms of voice, look, manner and movement, were there but
+turned towards commonness, even towards a naive but very self-conscious
+impropriety. Had she been a public performer instead of merely a woman
+of the world, the whole audience must have at once recognised the
+imitation. As it was, her many friends in the house noticed it, and
+during the short progress of the scene various heads were turned in her
+direction, various faces glanced up at the big box in which she sat,
+leaning one arm on the ledge, and looking towards Miss Schley with an
+expression of quiet observation--a little indifferent--on her white
+face. Even Sir Donald, who was next to her, and who once--in the most
+definite moment of Miss Schley's ingenious travesty--looked at her for
+an instant, could not discern that she was aware of what was amusing or
+enraging all her acquaintances.
+
+Naturally she had grasped the situation at once, had discovered at once
+why Miss Schley was anxious for her to be there. As she sat in the
+box looking on at this gross impertinence, she seemed to herself to be
+watching herself after a long _degringolade_, which had brought her, not
+to the gutter, but to the smart restaurant, the smart music-hall,
+the smart night club; the smart everything else that is beyond the
+borderland of even a lax society. This was Miss Schley's comment upon
+her. The sting of it lay in this fact, that it followed immediately
+upon the heels of the unpleasant scene at Arkell House. Otherwise, she
+thought it would not have troubled her. Now it did trouble her. She felt
+not only indignant with Miss Schley. She felt also secretly distressed
+in a more subtle way. Miss Schley's performance was calculated, coming
+at this moment, to make her world doubtful just when it had been turned
+from doubt. A good caricature fixes the attention upon the oddities, or
+the absurdities, latent in the original. But this caricature did more.
+It suggested hidden possibilities which she, by her own indiscreet
+action at the ball, had made perhaps to seem probabilities to many
+people.
+
+Here, before her friends, was set a woman strangely like her, but
+evidently a bad woman. Lady Holme was certain that the result of Miss
+Schley's performance would be that were she to do things now which, done
+before the Arkell House ball and this first night, would not have been
+noticed, or would have been merely smiled at, they would be commented
+upon with acrimony, exaggerated, even condemned.
+
+Miss Schley was turning upon her one of those mirrors which distorts by
+enlarging. Society would be likely to see her permanently distorted, and
+not only in mannerisms but in character.
+
+It happened that this fact was specially offensive to her on this
+particular evening, and at this particular moment of her life.
+
+While she sat there and watched the scene run its course, and saw,
+without seeming to see, the effect it had upon those whom she knew well
+in the house--saw Mrs. Wolfstein's eager delight in it, Lady Manby's
+broad amusement, Robin Pierce's carefully-controlled indignation,
+Mr. Bry's sardonic and always cold gratification, Lady Cardington's
+surprised, half-tragic wonder--she was oscillating between two courses,
+one a course of reserve, of stern self-control and abnegation, the other
+a course of defiance, of reckless indulgence of the strong temper that
+dwelt within her, and that occasionally showed itself for a moment, as
+it had on the evening of Miss Filberte's fiasco. That temper was flaming
+now unseen. Was she going to throw cold water over the flame, or to fan
+it? She did not know.
+
+When the curtain fell, the critics, who sometimes seem to enjoy
+personally what they call very sad and disgraceful in print, were
+smiling at one another. The blank faces of the men about town in the
+stalls were shining almost unctuously. The smart Americans were busily
+saying to everyone, "Didn't we say so?" The whole house was awake. Miss
+Schley might not be much of an actress. Numbers of people were already
+bustling about to say that she could not act at all. But she had
+banished dulness. She had shut the yawning lips, and stopped that uneasy
+cough which is the expression of the relaxed mind rather than of the
+relaxed throat.
+
+Lady Holme sat back a little in the box.
+
+"What d'you think of her?" she said to Sir Donald. "I think she's rather
+piquant, not anywhere near Granier, of course, but still--"
+
+"I think her performance entirely odious," he said, with an unusual
+emphasis that was almost violent. "Entirely odious."
+
+He got up from his seat, striking his thin fingers against the palms of
+his hands.
+
+"Vulgar and offensive," he said, almost as if to himself, and with a
+sort of passion. "Vulgar and offensive!"
+
+Suddenly he turned away and went out of the box.
+
+"I say--"
+
+Lady Holme, who had been watching Sir Donald's disordered exit, looked
+round to Leo.
+
+"I say--" he repeated. "What's up with pater?"
+
+"He doesn't seem to be enjoying the play."
+
+Leo Ulford looked unusually grave, even thoughtful, as if he were
+pondering over some serious question. He kept his blue eyes fixed upon
+Lady Holme. At last he said, in a voice much lower than usual:
+
+"Poor chap!"
+
+"Who's a poor chap?"
+
+Leo jerked his head towards the door.
+
+"Your father? Why?"
+
+"Why--at his age!"
+
+The last words were full of boyish contempt.
+
+"I don't understand."
+
+"Yes, you do. To be like that at his age. What's the good? As if--" He
+smiled slowly at her. "I'm glad I'm young," he said.
+
+"I'm glad you're young too," she answered. "But you're quite wrong about
+Sir Donald."
+
+She let her eyes rest on his. He shook his head.
+
+"No, I'm not. I guessed it that day at the Carlton. All through lunch he
+looked at you."
+
+"But what has all this to do with Miss Schley's performance?"
+
+"Because she's something like you, but low down, where you'd never go."
+
+He drew his chair a little closer to hers.
+
+"Would you?" he added, almost in a whisper.
+
+Mr. Laycock, who was in raptures over Miss Schley's performance, had got
+up to speak to Fritz, but found the latter being steadily hypnotised by
+Mrs. Leo's trumpet, which went up towards his mouth whenever he opened
+it. He bellowed distracted nothings but could not make her hear,
+obtaining no more fortunate result than a persistent flutter of pink
+eyelids, and a shrill, reiterated "The what? The what?"
+
+A sharp tap came presently on the box door, and Mrs. Wolfstein's painted
+face appeared. Lord Holme sprang up with undisguised relief.
+
+"What d'you think of Pimpernel? Ah, Mr. Laycock--I heard your faithful
+hands."
+
+"Stunnin'!" roared Lord Holme, "simply stunnin'!"
+
+"Stunnin'! stunnin'!" exclaimed Mr. Laycock; "Rippin'! There's no other
+word. Simply rippin'!"
+
+"The what? The what?" cried Mrs. Ulford.
+
+Mrs. Wolfstein bent down, with expansive affection, over Lady Holme's
+chair, and clasped the left hand which Lady Holme carelessly raised to a
+level with her shoulder.
+
+"You dear person! Nice of you to come, and in such a gown too! The
+angels wear white lace thrown together by Victorine--it is Victorine? I
+was certain!--I'm sure. D'you like Pimpernel?"
+
+Her too lustrous eyes--even Mrs. Wolfstein's eyes looked
+over-dressed--devoured Lady Holme, and her large, curving features were
+almost riotously interrogative.
+
+"Yes," Lady Holme said. "Quite."
+
+"She's startled everybody."
+
+"Startled!--why?"
+
+"Oh, well--she has! There's money in it, don't you think?"
+
+"Henry," who had accompanied his wife, and who was standing sideways
+at the back of the box looking like a thief in the night, came a step
+forward at the mention of money.
+
+"I'm afraid I'm no judge of that. Your husband would know better."
+
+"Plenty of money," said "Henry," in a low voice that seemed to issue
+from the bridge of his nose; "it ought to bring a good six thousand
+into the house for the four weeks. That's--for Miss Schley--for the
+Syndicate--ten per cent. on the gross, and twenty-five per cent.--"
+
+He found himself in mental arithmetic.
+
+"The--swan with the golden eggs!" said Lady Holme, lightly, turning once
+more to Leo Ulford. "You mustn't kill Miss Schley."
+
+Mrs. Wolfstein looked at Mr. Laycock and murmured to him:
+
+"Pimpernel does any killing that's going about--for herself. What d'you
+say, Franky?"
+
+They went out of the box together, followed by "Henry," who was still
+buzzing calculations, like a Jewish bee.
+
+Lord Holme resolutely tore himself from the ear-trumpet, and was
+preparing to follow, with the bellowed excuse that he was "sufferin'
+from toothache" and had been ordered to "do as much smokin' as
+possible," when the curtain rose on the second act.
+
+Miss Schley was engaged to a supper-party that evening and did not wish
+to be late. Lord Holme sat down again looking scarcely pleasant.
+
+"Do as much--the what?" cried Mrs. Ulford, holding the trumpet at right
+angles to her pink face.
+
+Leo Ulford leant backwards and hissed "Hush!" at her. She looked at him
+and then at Lady Holme, and a sudden expression of old age came into her
+bird-like face and seemed to overspread her whole body. She dropped the
+trumpet and touched the diamonds that glittered in the front of her low
+gown with trembling hands.
+
+Mr. Laycock slipped into the box when the curtain had been up two or
+three minutes, but Sir Donald did not return.
+
+"I b'lieve he's bolted," Leo whispered to Lady Holme. "Just like him."
+
+"Why?"
+
+"Oh!--I'm here, for one thing."
+
+He looked at her victoriously.
+
+"You'll have a letter from him to-morrow. Poor old chap!"
+
+He spoke contemptuously.
+
+For the first time Lord Holme seemed consciously and unfavourably
+observant of his wife and Leo. His under-jaw began to move. But Miss
+Schley came on to the stage again, and he thrust his head eagerly
+forward.
+
+During the rest of the evening Miss Schley did not relax her ingenious
+efforts of mimicry, but she took care not to make them too prominent.
+She had struck her most resonant note in the first act, and during the
+two remaining acts she merely kept her impersonation to its original
+lines. Lady Holme watched the whole performance imperturbably, but
+before the final curtain fell she knew that she was not going to
+throw cold water on that flame which was burning within her. Fritz's
+behaviour, perhaps, decided which of the two actions should be carried
+out--the douching or the fanning. Possibly Leo Ulford had something to
+say in the matter too. Or did the faces of friends below in the stalls
+play their part in the silent drama which moved step by step with the
+spoken drama on the stage? Lady Holme did not ask questions of herself.
+When Mr. Laycock and Fritz were furiously performing the duties of a
+claque at the end of the play, she got up smiling, and nodded to Mrs.
+Wolfstein in token of her pleasure in Miss Schley's success, her opinion
+that it had been worthily earned. As she nodded she touched one hand
+with the other, making a silent applause that Mrs. Wolfstein and all her
+friends might see. Then she let Leo Ulford put on her cloak and called
+pretty words down Mrs. Leo's trumpet, all the while nearly deafened by
+Fritz's demonstrations, which even outran Mr. Laycock's.
+
+When at last they died away she said to Leo:
+
+"We are going on to the Elwyns. Shall you be there?"
+
+He stood over her, while Mrs. Ulford watched him, drooping her head
+sideways.
+
+"Yes."
+
+"We can talk it all over quietly. Fritz!"
+
+"What's that about the Elwyns?" said Lord Holme.
+
+"I was telling Mr. Ulford that we are going on there."
+
+"I'm not. Never heard of it."
+
+Lady Holme was on the point of retorting that it was he who had told her
+to accept the invitation on the ground that "the Elwyns always do you
+better than anyone in London, whether they're second-raters or not," but
+a look in Leo Ulford's eyes checked her.
+
+"Very well," she said. "Go to the club if you like; but I must peep
+in for five minutes. Mrs. Ulford, didn't you think Miss Schley rather
+delicious--?"
+
+She went out of the box with one hand on a pink arm, talking gently into
+the trumpet.
+
+"You goin' to the Elwyns?" said Lord Holme, gruffly, to Leo Ulford as
+they got their coats and prepared to follow.
+
+"Depends on my wife. If she's done up--"
+
+"Ah!" said Lord Holme, striking a match, and holding out his cigarette
+case, regardless of regulations.
+
+A momentary desire to look in at the Elwyns' possessed him. Then he
+thought of a supper-party and forgot it.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI
+
+MRS. WOLFSTEIN was right. There was money in Miss Schley's performance.
+Her sly impropriety appealed with extraordinary force to the peculiar
+respectability characteristic of the British temperament, and her
+celebrity, hitherto mainly social, was suddenly and enormously
+increased. Already a popular person, she became a popular actress, and
+was soon as well-known to the world in the streets and the suburbs as
+to the world in the drawing-rooms of Mayfair. And this public celebrity
+greatly increased the value that was put upon her in private--especially
+the value put upon her by men.
+
+The average man adores being connected openly with the woman who is the
+rage of the moment. It flatters his vanity and makes him feel good
+all over. It even frequently turns his head and makes him almost as
+intoxicated as a young girl with adulation received at her first ball.
+
+The combination of Miss Schley herself and Miss Schley's celebrity--or
+notoriety--had undoubtedly turned Lord Holme's head. Perhaps he had not
+the desire to conceal the fact. Certainly he had not the finesse. He
+presented his turned head to the world with an audacious simplicity that
+was almost laughable, and that had in it an element of boyishness not
+wholly unattractive to those who looked on--the casual ones to whom
+even the tragedies of a highly-civilised society bring but a quiet and
+cynical amusement.
+
+Lady Holme was not one of these. Her strong temper was token of a vivid
+temperament. Till now this vivid temperament had been rocked in the
+cradle of an easy, a contented, a very successful life. Such storms as
+had come to her had quickly passed away. The sun had never been far off.
+Her egoism had been constantly flattered. Her will had been perpetually
+paramount. Even the tyranny of Lord Holme had been but as the tyranny
+of a selfish, thoughtless, pleasure-seeking boy who, after all, was
+faithful to her and was fond of her. His temperamental indifference to
+any feelings but his own had been often concealed and overlaid by his
+strong physical passion for his wife's beauty, his profound satisfaction
+in having carried off and in possessing a woman admired and sought by
+many others.
+
+Suddenly life presented to Lady Holme its seamy side; Fate attacking
+her in her woman's vanity, her egoism, even in her love. The vision
+startled. The blow stung. She was conscious of confusion, of cloud, then
+of a terrible orderliness, of a clear light. In the confusion she seemed
+to hear voices never heard before, voices that dared to jeer at her; in
+the cloud to see phantoms of gigantic size menacing her, impending over
+her. The orderliness, the clear light were more frightful to her. They
+left less to her imagination; had, as it were, no ragged edges. In
+them she faced a definite catastrophe, saw it whole, as one sees a near
+object in the magical atmosphere of the East, outlined with burning
+blue, quivering with relentless gold. She saw herself in the dust,
+pelted, mocked at.
+
+That seemed at first to be incredible. But she saw it so plainly that
+she could not even pretend to herself that she was deceived by some
+unusual play of light or combination of shadows. What she saw--was:
+
+Her husband had thrown off his allegiance to her and transferred his
+admiration, perhaps his affection, to the woman who had most deftly and
+delicately insulted her in the face of all her world. And he had done
+this with the most abominable publicity. That was what she saw in a
+clear light like the light of the East. That was what sent a lash across
+her temperament, scarring it perhaps, but waking it into all it could
+ever have of life. In each woman there is hidden a second woman, more
+fierce and tender, more evil and good, more strong and fervent than the
+woman who hides her in the ordinary hours of life; a woman who weeps
+blood where the other woman weeps tears, who strikes with a flaming
+sword where the other woman strikes with a willow wand.
+
+This woman now rose up in Lady Holme, rose up to do battle.
+
+The laughing, frivolous world was all unconscious of her. Lord Holme was
+unconscious of her. But she was at last fully conscious of herself.
+
+This woman remembered Robin Pierce's odd belief and the light words
+with which she had chastised it. He had persistently kept faith in, and
+sought for, a far-away being. But she was a being of light and glory.
+His kernel of the husk was still a siren, but a siren with a heart, with
+an exquisite imagination, with a fragrance of dreams about her, a lilt
+of eternal music in her voice, the beaming, wonder of things unearthly
+in her eyes. Poor Robin! Lady Holme found it in her heart to pity him
+as she realised herself. But then she turned her pity aside and
+concentrated it elsewhere. The egoism of her was not dead though the
+hidden woman had sprung up in vivid life. Her intellect was spurred
+into energy by the suffering of her pride and of her heart. Memory was
+restless and full of the passion of recall.
+
+She remembered the night when she softly drew up the hood of her
+dressing-gown above her head and, rocking herself to and fro, murmured
+the "Allah-Akbar" of a philosophic fatalist--"I will live for the day. I
+will live for the night." What an absurd patter that was on the lips
+of a woman. And she remembered the conversation with Fritz that had
+preceded her monologue. She had asked him then whether he could love
+her if her beauty were taken from her. It had never occurred to her that
+while her beauty still remained her spell upon him might be weakened,
+might be broken. That it was broken now she did not say to herself.
+All she did say to herself was that she must strike an effective blow
+against this impertinent woman. She had some pride but not enough to
+keep her passive. She was not one of those women who would rather lose
+all they have than struggle to keep it. She meant to struggle, but she
+had no wish that the world should know what she was doing. Pride rose
+in her when she thought of cold eyes watching the battle, cold voices
+commenting on it--Amalia Wolfstein's eyes, Mr. Bry's voice, a hundred
+other eyes and voices. Her quickened intellect, her woman's heart would
+teach her to be subtle. The danger lay in her temper. But since the
+scene at Arkell House she had thoroughly realised its impetuosity and
+watched it warily as one watches an enemy. She did not intend to be
+ruined by anything within her. The outside chances of life were many
+enough and deadly enough to deal with. Strength and daring were needed
+to ward them off. The chances that had their origin within the soul,
+the character--not really chances at all--must be controlled, foreseen,
+forestalled.
+
+And yet she had not douched the flame of defiance which she had felt
+burning within her on the night of Pimpernel Schley's first appearance
+on the London stage. She had fanned it. At the Elwyns' ball she had
+fanned it. Temper had led her that night. Deliberately, and knowing
+perfectly well who was her guide, she had let it lead her. She had been
+like a human being who says, "To do this will be a sin. Very well,
+I choose to sin. But I will sin carefully." At the Elwyns she had
+discovered why her husband had not come with her. She had stayed late to
+please Leo Ulford. Mr. Laycock had come in about two in the morning and
+had described to Leo the festivity devised by Lord Holme in honour
+of Miss Schley, at which he had just been present. And Leo Ulford had
+repeated the description to her. She had deceived him into thinking that
+she had known of the supper-party and approved of it. But, after this
+deception, she had given a looser rein to her temper. She had let
+herself go, careless whether she set the poor pink eyelids of Mrs. Leo
+fluttering or not.
+
+The hint of Fritz which she recognised in Leo Ulford had vaguely
+attracted her to him from the first. How her world would have laughed at
+such a domestic sentiment! She found herself wondering whether it were
+Miss Schley's physical resemblance to her which had first attracted
+Fritz, the touch of his wife in a woman who was not his wife and who was
+what men call "a rascal." Perhaps Fritz loved Miss Schley's imitation
+of her. She thought a great deal about that--turning it over and over in
+her mind, bringing to bear on it the white light of her knowledge of her
+husband's character. Did he see in the American his wife transformed,
+made common, sly, perhaps wicked, set on the outside edge of decent
+life, or further--over the border? And did he delight in that? If
+so, ought she not to--? Then her mind was busy. Should she change? If
+herself changed were his ideal, why not give him what he wanted? Why let
+another woman give it to him? But at this point she recognised a fact
+recognised by thousands of women with exasperation, sometimes with
+despair--that men would often hate in their wives the thing that draws
+them to women not their wives. The Pimpernel Schleys of the world
+know this masculine propensity of seeking different things--opposites,
+even--in the wife and the woman beyond the edge of the hearthstone, a
+propensity perhaps more tragic to wives than any other that exists in
+husbands. And having recognised this fact, Lady Holme knew that it would
+be worse than useless for her to imitate Miss Schley's imitation of her.
+Then, travelling along the road of thought swiftly as women in such a
+case always travel, she reached another point. She began to consider
+the advice of Robin Pierce, given before she had begun to feel with such
+intensity, to consider it as a soldier might consider a plan of campaign
+drawn up by another.
+
+Should she, instead of descending, of following the demure steps of the
+American to the lower places, strive to ascend?
+
+Could she ascend? Was Robin Pierce right? She thought for a long time
+about his conception of her. The singing woman; would she be the most
+powerful enemy that could confront Miss Schley? And, if she would be,
+could the singing woman be made continuous in the speech and the actions
+of the life without music? She remembered a man she had known who
+stammered when he spoke, but never stammered when he sang. And she
+thought she resembled this man. Robin Pierce had always believed that
+she could speak without the stammer even as she sang without it. She had
+never cared to. She had trusted absolutely in her beauty. Now her trust
+was shaken. She thought of the crutch.
+
+Realising herself she had said within herself, "Poor Robin!" seeing
+perhaps the tigress where he saw the angel. Now she asked herself
+whether the angel could conquer where the tigress might fail. People had
+come round her like beggars who have heard the chink of gold and she had
+showed them an empty purse. Could she show them something else? And if
+she could, would her husband join the beggars? Would he care to have
+even one piece of gold?
+
+Whether Lord Holme's obvious infatuation had carried him very far she
+did not know. She did not stop to ask. A woman capable, as she was, of
+retrospective jealousy, an egoist accustomed to rule, buffeted in
+heart and pride, is swift not sluggish. And then how can one know these
+things? Jealousy rushes because it is ignorant.
+
+Lord Holme and she were apparently on good terms. She was subtle, he was
+careless. As she did not interfere with him his humour was excellent.
+She had carried self-control so far as never to allude to the fact
+that she knew about the supper-party. Yet it had actually got into the
+papers. Paragraphs had been written about a wonderful ornament of ice,
+representing the American eagle perched on the wrist of a glittering
+maiden, which had stood in the middle of the table. Of course she had
+seen them, and of course Lord Holme thought she had not seen them as she
+had never spoken of them. He went his way rejoicing, and there seemed
+to be sunshine in the Cadogan Square house. And meanwhile the world was
+smiling at the apparent triumph of impertinence, and wondering how long
+it would last, how far it would go. The few who were angry--Sir Donald
+was one of them--were in a mean minority.
+
+Robin Pierce was angry too, but not with so much single-heartedness as
+was Sir Donald. It could not quite displease him if the Holmes drifted
+apart. Yet he was fond enough of Lady Holme, and he was subtle enough,
+to be sorry for any sorrow of hers, and to understand it--at any rate,
+partially--without much explanation. Perhaps he would have been more
+sorry if Leo Ulford had not come into Lady Holme's life, and if the
+defiance within her had not driven her into an intimacy that distressed
+Mrs. Leo and puzzled Sir Donald.
+
+Robin's time in London was very nearly at an end. The season was at its
+height. Every day was crowded with engagements. It was almost impossible
+to find a quiet moment even to give to a loved one. But Robin was
+determined to have at least one hour with Lady Holme before he started
+for Italy. He told her so, and begged her to arrange it. She put him off
+again and again, then at last made an engagement, then broke it. In her
+present condition of mind to break faith with a man was a pleasure with
+a bitter savour. But Robin was not to be permanently avoided. He had
+obstinacy. He meant to have his hour, and perhaps Lady Holme always
+secretly meant that he should have it. At any rate she made another
+appointment and kept it.
+
+She came one afternoon to his house in Half Moon Street. She had never
+been there before. She had never meant to go there. To do so was an
+imprudence. That fact was another of the pleasures with a bitter savour.
+
+Robin met her at the head of the stairs, with an air of still excitement
+not common in his look and bearing. He followed her into the blue room
+where Sir Donald had talked with Carey. The "_Danseuse de Tunisie_"
+still presided over it, holding her little marble fan. The open
+fireplace was filled with roses. The tea-table was already set by the
+great square couch. Robin shut the door and took out a matchbox.
+
+"I am going to make tea," he said.
+
+"Bachelor fashion?"
+
+She sat down on the couch and looked round quickly, taking in all the
+details of the room. He saw her eyes rest on the woman with the fan, but
+she said nothing about it. He lit a silver spirit lamp and then sat down
+beside her.
+
+"At last!" he said.
+
+Lady Holme leaned back in her corner. She was dressed in black, with a
+small, rather impertinent black toque, in which one pale blue wing of a
+bird stood up. Her face looked gay and soft, and Robin, who had cunning,
+recognised that quality of his in her.
+
+"I oughtn't to be here."
+
+"Absurd. Why not?"
+
+"Fritz has a jealous temperament."
+
+She spoke with a simple naturalness that moved the diplomat within him
+to a strong admiration.
+
+"You can act far better than Miss Schley," he said, with intentional
+bluntness.
+
+"I love her acting."
+
+"I'm going away. I shan't see you for an age. Don't give me a theatrical
+performance to-day."
+
+"Can a woman do anything else?"
+
+"Yes. She can be a woman."
+
+"That's stupid--or terrible. What a dear little lamp that is! I like
+your room."
+
+Robin looked at the blue-grey linen on the walls, at the pale blue wing
+in her hat, then at her white face.
+
+"Viola," he said, leaning forward, "it's bad to waste anything in this
+life, but the worst thing of all is to waste unhappiness. If I could
+teach you to be niggardly of your tears!"
+
+"What do you mean?"
+
+She spoke with sudden sharpness.
+
+"I never cry. Nothing's worth a tear," she added.
+
+"Yes, some things are. But not what you are going to weep for."
+
+Her face had changed. The gaiety had gone out of it, and it looked
+hesitating.
+
+"You think I am going to shed tears?" she said. "Why?"
+
+"I am glad you let me tell you. For the loss of nothing--a coin that
+never came out of the mint, that won't pass current anywhere."
+
+"I've lost nothing," she exclaimed, "nothing. You're talking nonsense."
+
+He made no reply, but looked at the small, steady flame of the lamp. She
+followed his eyes, and, when he saw that she was looking at it too, he
+said:
+
+"Isn't a little, steady flame like that beautiful?"
+
+She laughed.
+
+"When it means tea--yes. Does it mean tea?"
+
+"If you can wait a few minutes."
+
+"I suppose I must. Have you heard anything of Mr. Carey?"
+
+Robin looked at her narrowly.
+
+"What made you think of him just then?"
+
+"I don't know. Being here, I suppose. He often comes here, doesn't he?"
+
+"Then this room holds more of his personality than of mine?"
+
+There was an under sound of vexation in his voice.
+
+"Have you heard anything?"
+
+"No. But no doubt he's still in the North with his mother."
+
+"How domestic. I hope there is a stool of repentance in the family
+house."
+
+"I wonder if you could ever repent of anything."
+
+"Do you think there is anything I ought to repent of?"
+
+"Oh, yes."
+
+"What?"
+
+"You might have married a man who knew the truth of you, and you married
+a man incapable of ever knowing it."
+
+He half expected an outburst of anger to follow his daring speech, but
+she sat quite still, looking at him steadily. She had taken off her
+gloves, and her hands lay lightly, one resting on the other.
+
+"You mean, I might have married you."
+
+"I'm not worth much, but at least I could never have betrayed the white
+angel in you."
+
+She leaned towards him and spoke earnestly, almost like a child to an
+older person in whom it has faith.
+
+"Do you think such an angel could do anything in--in this sort of
+world?"
+
+"Modern London?"
+
+She nodded, keeping her eyes still on him. He guessed at once of what
+she was thinking.
+
+"Do anything--is rather vague," he replied evasively. "What sort of
+thing?"
+
+Suddenly she threw off all reserve and let her temper go.
+
+"If an angel were striving with a common American, do you mean to tell
+me you don't know which would go to the wall in our world?" she cried.
+"Robin, you may be a thousand things, but you aren't a fool. Nor am
+I--not _au fond_. And yet I have thought--I have wondered--"
+
+She stopped.
+
+"What?" he asked.
+
+"Whether, if there is an angel in me, it mightn't be as well to trot it
+out."
+
+The self-consciousness of the slang prevented him from hating it.
+
+"Ah!" he said. "When have you wondered?"
+
+"Lately. It's your fault. You have insisted so much upon the existence
+of the celestial being that at last I've become almost credulous. It's
+very absurd and I'm still hanging back."
+
+"Call credulity belief and you needn't be ashamed of it."
+
+"And if I believe, what then?"
+
+"Then a thousand things. Belief sheds strength through all the tissues
+of the mind, the heart, the temperament. Disbelief sheds weakness. The
+one knits together, the other dissolves."
+
+"There are people who think angels frightfully boring company."
+
+"I know."
+
+"Well then?"
+
+Suddenly Robin got up and spoke almost brutally.
+
+"Do you think I don't see that you are trying to find out from me what I
+think would be the best means of--"
+
+The look in her face stopped him.
+
+"I think the water is boiling," he said, going over to the lamp.
+
+"It ought to bubble," she answered quietly.
+
+He lifted up the lid of the silver bowl and peeped in.
+
+"It is bubbling."
+
+For a moment he was busy pouring the water into the teapot. While he did
+this there was a silence between them. Lady Holme got up from the sofa
+and walked about the room. When she came to the "_Danseuse de Tunisie_"
+she stopped in front of it.
+
+"How strange that fan is," she said.
+
+Robin shut the lid of the teapot and came over to her.
+
+"Do you like it?"
+
+"The fan?"
+
+"The whole thing?"
+
+"It's lovely, but I fancy it would have been lovelier without the fan."
+
+"Why?"
+
+She considered, holding her head slightly on one side and half closing
+her eyes.
+
+"The woman's of eternity, but the fan's of a day," she said presently.
+"It belittles her, I think. It makes her _chic_ when she might have
+been--"
+
+She stopped.
+
+"Throw away your fan!" he said in a low, eager voice.
+
+"I?"
+
+"Yes. Be the woman, the eternal woman. You've never been her yet, but
+you could be. Now is the moment. You're unhappy."
+
+"No," she said sharply.
+
+"Yes, you are. Viola, don't imagine I can't understand. You care for him
+and he's hurting you--hurting you by being just himself, all he can ever
+be. It's the fan he cares for."
+
+"And you tell me to throw it away!"
+
+She spoke with sudden passion. They stood still for a moment in front of
+the statuette, looking at each other silently. Then Robin said, with a
+sort of bitter surprise:
+
+"But you can't love him like that!"
+
+"I do."
+
+It gave her an odd, sharp pleasure to speak the truth to him.
+
+"What are you going to do, then?" he asked, after a pause.
+
+He spoke without emotion, accepting the situation.
+
+"To do? What do you mean?"
+
+"Come and sit down. I'll tell you."
+
+He took her hand and led her back to the sofa. When she had sat down, he
+poured out tea, put in cream and gave it to her.
+
+"Nothing to eat," she said.
+
+He poured out his tea and sat down in a chair opposite to her, and close
+to her.
+
+"May I dare to speak frankly?" he asked. "I've known you so long, and
+I've--I've loved you very much, and I still do."
+
+"Go on!" she answered.
+
+"You thought your beauty was everything, that so long as it lasted you
+were safe from unhappiness. Well, to-day you are beautiful, and yet--"
+
+"But what does he care for?" she said. "What do men care for? You
+pretend that it's something romantic, something good even. Really, it's
+impudent--just that--cold and impudent. You're a fool, Robin, you're a
+fool!"
+
+"Am I? Thank God there are men--and men. You can't be what Carey said."
+
+For once he had spoken incautiously. He had blurted out something he
+never meant to say.
+
+"Mr. Carey!" she exclaimed quickly, curiously. "What did Mr. Carey say I
+was?"
+
+"Oh--"
+
+"No, Robin, you are to tell me. No diplomatic lies."
+
+A sudden, almost brutal desire came into him to tell her the truth, to
+revel in plain speaking for once, and to see how she would bear it.
+
+"He said you were an egoist, that you were fine enough in your brilliant
+selfishness to stand quite alone--"
+
+A faint smile moved the narrow corners of her lips at the last words. He
+went on.
+
+"--That your ideal of a real man, the sort of man a woman loses her head
+for, was--"
+
+He stopped. Carey's description of the Lord Holme and Leo Ulford type
+had not been very delicate.
+
+"Was--?" she said, with insistence. "Was--?"
+
+Robin thought how she had hurt him, and said:
+
+"Carey said, a huge mass of bones, muscles, thews, sinews, that cares
+nothing for beauty."
+
+"Beauty! That doesn't care for beauty! But then--?"
+
+"Carey meant--yes, I'm sure Carey meant real beauty."
+
+"What do you mean by 'real beauty'?"
+
+"An inner light that radiates outward, but whose abiding-place is
+hidden--perhaps. But one can't say. One can only understand and love."
+
+"Oh. And Mr. Carey said that. Was he--was he at all that evening as he
+was at Arkell House? Was he talking nonsense or was he serious?"
+
+"Difficult to say! But he was not as he was at Arkell House. Which knows
+you best--Carey or I?"
+
+"Neither of you. I don't know myself."
+
+"What are you going to do?"
+
+"I don't know. The only thing I know is that you can't tell me what to
+do."
+
+"No, I can't."
+
+"But perhaps I can tell you."
+
+She put down her cup and looked at him with a sort of grave kindness
+that he had never seen in her face before.
+
+"What to do?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Well?"
+
+"Give up loving the white angel. Perhaps it isn't there. Perhaps it
+doesn't exist. And if it does--perhaps it's a poor, feeble thing that's
+no good to me, no good to me."
+
+Suddenly she put her arms on the back of the couch, leaned her face on
+them and began to cry gently.
+
+Robin was terribly startled. He got up, stretched out his hands to her
+in an impulsive gesture, then drew them back, turned and went to the
+window.
+
+She was crying for Fritz.
+
+That was absurd and horrible. Yet he knew that those tears came from
+the heart of the hidden woman he had so long believed in, proved her
+existence, showed that she could love.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII
+
+AS Lady Holme had foreseen, the impertinent mimicry of Miss Schley
+concentrated a great deal of attention upon the woman mimicked. Many
+people, accepting the American's cleverness as a fashionable fact, also
+accepted her imitation as the imitation of a fact more surreptitious,
+and credited Lady Holme with a secret leading towards the improper never
+before suspected by them. They remembered the break between the Holmes
+and Carey, the strange scene at the Arkell House ball, and began to
+whisper many things of Lady Holme, and to turn a tide of pity and of
+sympathy upon her husband. On this tide Lord Holme and the American
+might be said to float merrily like corks, unabashed in the eye of the
+sun. Their intimacy was condoned on all sides as a natural result of
+Lady Holme's conduct. Most of that which had been accomplished by
+Lord and Lady Holme together after their reconciliation over the first
+breakfast was undone. The silent tongue began to wag, and to murmur the
+usual platitudes about the poor fellow who could not find sympathy at
+home and so was obliged, against his will, to seek for it outside.
+
+All this Lady Holme had foreseen as she sat in her box at the British
+Theatre.
+
+The wrong impression of her was enthroned. She had to reckon with it.
+This fact, fully recognised by her, made her wish to walk warily where
+otherwise her temper might have led her to walk heedlessly. She wanted
+to do an unusual thing, to draw her husband's attention to an intimacy
+which was concealed from the world--the intimacy between herself and Leo
+Ulford.
+
+After her visit to the house in Half Moon Street she began to see a
+great deal of Leo Ulford. Carey had been right when he said that they
+would get on together. She understood him easily and thoroughly, and
+for that very reason he was attracted by her. Men delight to feel that a
+woman is understanding them; women that no man can ever understand them.
+Under the subtle influence of Lady Holme's complete comprehension of
+him, Leo Ulford's nature expanded, stretched itself as his long legs
+stretched themselves when his mind was purring. There was not much in
+him to reveal, but what there was he revealed, and Lady Holme seemed to
+be profoundly interested in the contents of his soul.
+
+But she was not interested in the contents of his soul in public places
+on which the world's eye is fixed. She refused to allow Leo to do what
+he desired, and assumed an air of almost possessive friendship before
+Society. His natural inclination for the blatant was firmly checked
+by her. She cared nothing for him really, but her woman's instinct had
+divined that he was the type of man most likely to rouse the slumbering
+passion of Fritz, if Fritz were led to suspect that she was attracted
+to him. Men like Lord Holme are most easily jealous of the men who most
+closely resemble them. Their conceit leads them to put an exaggerated
+value upon their own qualities in others, upon the resemblance to their
+own physique exhibited by others.
+
+Leo Ulford was rather like a younger and coarser Lord Holme. In him Lady
+Holme recognised an effective weapon for the chastisement, if not for
+the eventual reclamation, of her husband. It was characteristic of her
+that this was the weapon she chose, the weapon she still continued to
+rely on even after her conversation with Robin Pierce. Her faith in
+white angels was very small. Perpetual contact with the world of to-day,
+with life as lived by women of her order, had created within her far
+other faiths, faiths in false gods, a natural inclination to bow the
+knee in the house of Rimmon rather than before the altars guarded by the
+Eternities.
+
+And then--she knew Lord Holme; knew what attracted him, what stirred
+him, what moved him to excitement, what was likely to hold him. She felt
+sure that he and such men as he yield the homage they would refuse to
+the angel to the siren. Instead of seeking the angel within herself,
+therefore, she sought the siren. Instead of striving to develope that
+part of her which was spiritual, she fixed all her attention upon that
+part of her which was fleshly, which was physical. She neglected the
+flame and began to make pretty patterns with the ashes.
+
+Robin came to bid her good-bye before leaving London for Rome. The
+weeping woman was gone. He looked into the hard, white face of a woman
+who smiled. They talked rather constrainedly for a few minutes. Then
+suddenly he said:
+
+"Once it was a painted window, now it's an iron shutter."
+
+He got up from his chair and clasped his hands together behind his back.
+
+"What on earth do you mean?" she asked, still smiling.
+
+"Your face," he answered. "One could see you obscurely before. One can
+see nothing now."
+
+"You talk great nonsense, Robin. It's a good thing you're going back to
+Rome."
+
+"At least I shall find the spirit of beauty there," he said, almost with
+bitterness. "Over here it is treated as if it were Jezebel. It's trodden
+down. It's thrown to the dogs."
+
+"Poor spirit!"
+
+She laughed lightly.
+
+"Do you understand what they're saying of you?" he went on.
+
+"Where?"
+
+"All over London."
+
+"Perhaps."
+
+"But--do you?"
+
+"Perhaps I don't care to."
+
+"They're saying--'Poor thing! But it's her own fault.'"
+
+There was a silence. In it he looked at her hard, mercilessly. She
+returned his gaze, still smiling.
+
+"And it is your own fault," he went on after a moment. "If you had
+been yourself she couldn't have insulted you first and humiliated you
+afterwards. Oh, how I hate it! And yet--yet there are moments when I am
+like the others, when I feel--'She has deserved it.'"
+
+"When will you be in Rome?" she said.
+
+"And even now," he continued, ignoring her remark, "even now, what are
+you doing? Oh, Viola, you're a prey to the modern madness for crawling
+in the dirt instead of walking upright in the sun. You might be a
+goddess and you prefer to be an insect. Isn't it mad of you? Isn't it?"
+
+He was really excited, really passionate. His face showed that. There
+was fire in his eyes. His lips worked convulsively when he was not
+speaking. And yet there was just a faint ring of the accomplished
+orator's music in his voice, a music which suggests a listening ear--and
+that ear the orator's own.
+
+Perhaps she heard it. At any rate his passionate attack did not seem to
+move her.
+
+"I prefer to be what I am," was all she said.
+
+"What you are! But you don't know what you are."
+
+"And how can you pretend to know?" she asked. "Is a man more subtle
+about a woman than she is about herself?"
+
+He did not answer for a moment. Then he said bluntly:
+
+"Promise me one thing before I go away."
+
+"I don't know. What is it?"
+
+"Promise me not to--not to--"
+
+He hesitated. The calm of her face seemed almost to confuse him.
+
+"Well?" she said. "Go on."
+
+"Promise me not to justify anything people are saying, not to justify it
+with--with that fellow Ulford."
+
+"Good-bye," she answered, holding out her hand.
+
+He recognised that the time for his advice had gone by, if it had ever
+been.
+
+"What a way--what a way for us to--" he almost stammered.
+
+He recovered his self-possession with an effort and took her hand.
+
+"At least," he said in a low, quiet voice, "believe it is less jealousy
+that speaks within me than love--love for you, for the woman you are
+trampling in the dust."
+
+He looked into her eyes and went out. She did not see him again before
+he left England. And she was glad. She did not want to see him. Perhaps
+it was the first time in her life that the affection of a man whom she
+really liked was distasteful to her. It made her uneasy, doubtful of
+herself just then, to be loved as Robin loved her.
+
+Carey had come back to town, but he went nowhere. He was in bad odour.
+Sir Donald Ulford was almost the only person he saw anything of at this
+time. It seemed that Sir Donald had taken a fancy to Carey. At any rate,
+such friendly feeling as he had did not seem lessened after Carey's
+exhibition at Arkell House. When Carey returned to Stratton Street, Sir
+Donald paid him a visit and stayed some time. No allusion was made to
+the painful circumstances under which they had last seen each other
+until Sir Donald was on the point of going away. Then he said:
+
+"You have not forgotten that I expect you at Casa Felice towards the end
+of August?"
+
+Carey looked violently astonished.
+
+"Still?" he said.
+
+"Yes."
+
+Suddenly Carey shot out his hand and grasped Sir Donald's.
+
+"You aren't afraid to have a drunken beast like me in Casa Felice! It's
+a damned dangerous experiment."
+
+"I don't think so."
+
+"It's your own lookout, you know. I absolve you from the invitation."
+
+"I repeat it, then."
+
+"I accept it, then--again."
+
+Sir Donald went away thoughtfully. When he reached the Albany he found
+Mrs. Leo Ulford waiting for him in tears. They had a long interview.
+
+Many people fancied that Sir Donald looked more ghostly, more faded even
+than usual as the season wore on. They said he was getting too old to
+go about so much as he did, and that it was a pity Society "got such a
+hold" on men who ought to have had enough of it long ago. One night he
+met Lady Holme at the Opera. She was in her box and he in the stalls.
+After the second act she called him to her with a gay little nod of
+invitation. Lady Cardington had been with her during the act, but left
+the box when the curtain fell to see some friends close by. When
+Sir Donald tapped at the door Lady Holme was quite alone. He came in
+quietly--even his walk was rather ghostly--and sat down beside her.
+
+"You don't look well," she said after they had greeted each other.
+
+"I am quite well," he answered, with evident constraint.
+
+"I haven't seen you to speak to since that little note of yours."
+
+A very faint colour rose in his faded cheeks.
+
+"After Miss Schley's first night?" he murmured.
+
+His yellow fingers moved restlessly.
+
+"Do you know that your son told me you would write?" she continued.
+
+She was leaning back in her chair, half hidden by the curtain of the
+box.
+
+"Leo!"
+
+Sir Donald's voice was almost sharp and startling.
+
+"How should he--you spoke about me then?"
+
+There was a flash of light in his pale, almost colourless eyes.
+
+"I wondered where you had gone, and he said you would write next day."
+
+"That was all?"
+
+"Why, how suspicious you are!"
+
+She spoke banteringly.
+
+"Suspicious! No--but Leo does not understand me very well. I was rather
+old when he was born, and I have never been able to be much with him. He
+was educated in England, and my duties of course lay abroad."
+
+He paused, looking at her and moving his thin white moustache. Then, in
+an uneasy voice, he added:
+
+"You must not take my character altogether from Leo."
+
+"Nor you mine altogether from Miss Schley," said Lady Holme.
+
+She scarcely knew why she said it. She thought herself stupid,
+ridiculous almost, for saying it. Yet she could not help speaking.
+Perhaps she relied on Sir Donald's age. Or perhaps--but who knows why
+a woman is cautious or incautious in moments the least expected? God
+guides her, perhaps, or the devil--or merely a bottle imp. Men never
+know, and that is why they find her adorable.
+
+Sir Donald said nothing for a moment, only made the familiar movement
+with his hands that was a sign in him of concealed excitement or
+emotion. His eyes were fixed upon the ledge of the box. Lady Holme was
+puzzled by his silence and, at last, was on the point of making a remark
+on some other subject--Plancon's singing--when he spoke, like a man
+who had made up his mind firmly to take an unusual, perhaps a difficult
+course.
+
+"I wish to take it from you," he said. "Give me the right one, not an
+imitation of an imitation."
+
+She knew at once what he meant and was surprised. Had Leo Ulford been
+talking?
+
+"Lady Holme," he went on, "I am taking a liberty. I know that. It's a
+thing I have never done before, knowingly. Don't think me unconscious
+of what I am doing. But I am an old man, and old men can sometimes
+venture--allowance is sometimes made for them. I want to claim that
+allowance now for what I am going to say."
+
+"Well?" she said, neither hardly nor gently.
+
+In truth she scarcely knew whether she wished him to speak or not.
+
+"My son is--Leo is not a safe friend for you at this moment."
+
+Again the dull, brick-red flush rose in his cheeks. There was an odd,
+flattened look just above his cheekbones near his eyes, and the eyes
+themselves had a strange expression as of determination and guilt
+mingled.
+
+"Your son?" Lady Holme said. "But--"
+
+"I do not wish to assume anything, but I--well, my daughter-in-law
+sometimes comes to me."
+
+"Sometimes!" said Lady Holme.
+
+"Leo is not a good husband," Sir Donald said. "But that is not the
+point. He is also a bad--friend."
+
+"Why don't you say lover?" she almost whispered.
+
+He grasped his knee with one hand and moved the hand rapidly to and fro.
+
+"I must say of him to you that where his pleasure or his vanity is
+concerned he is unscrupulous."
+
+"Why say all this to a woman?"
+
+"You mean that you know as much as I?"
+
+"Don't you think it likely?"
+
+"Henrietta--"
+
+"Who is that?"
+
+"My daughter-in-law has done everything for Leo--too much. She gets
+nothing--not even gratitude. I am sorry to say he has no sense of
+chivalry towards women. You know him, I daresay. But do you know him
+thwarted?"
+
+"Ah, you don't think so badly of me after all?" she said quickly.
+
+"I--I think of you that--that--"
+
+He stopped.
+
+"I think that I could not bear to see the whiteness of your wings
+smirched by a child of mine." he added.
+
+"You too!" she said.
+
+Suddenly tears started into her eyes.
+
+"Another believer in the angel!" she thought.
+
+"May I come in?"
+
+It was Mr. Bry's cold voice. His discontented, sleek face was peeping
+round the door.
+
+Sir Donald got up to go.
+
+As Lady Holme drove away from Covent Garden that night she was haunted
+by a feverish, embittering thought:
+
+"Will everyone notice it but Fritz?"
+
+Lord Holme indeed seemed scarcely the same man who had forbidden Carey
+to come any more to his house, who had been jealous of Robin Pierce, who
+had even once said that he almost wished his wife were an ugly woman.
+The Grand Turk nature within him, if not actually dead, was certainly
+in abeyance. He was so intent on his own affairs that he paid no heed
+at all to his wife's, even when they might be said to be also his. Leo
+Ulford was becoming difficult to manage, and Lord Holme still gaily
+went his way. As Lady Holme thought over Sir Donald's words she felt a
+crushing weight of depression sink down upon her. The brougham rolled
+smoothly on through the lighted streets. She did not glance out of the
+windows, or notice the passing crowds. In the silence and darkness of
+her own soul she was trying not to feel, trying to think.
+
+A longing to be incautious, to do something startling, desperate, came
+to her.
+
+It was evident that Mrs. Ulford had been complaining to Sir Donald about
+his son's conduct. With whom? Lady Holme could not doubt that it was
+with herself. She had read, with one glance at the fluttering pink
+eyelids, the story of the Leo Ulford's _menage_. Now, she was not
+preoccupied with any regret for her own cruelty or for another woman's
+misery. The egoism spoken of by Carey was not dead in her yet, but very
+much alive. As she sat in the corner of the brougham, pressing herself
+against the padded wall, she was angry for herself, pitiful for herself.
+And she was jealous--horribly jealous. That woke up her imagination,
+all the intensity of her. Where was Fritz to-night? She did not know.
+Suddenly the dense ignorance in which every human being lives, and must
+live to the end of time, towered above her like a figure in a nightmare.
+What do we know, what can we ever know of each other? In each human
+being dwells the most terrible, the most ruthless power that exists--the
+power of silence.
+
+Fritz had that power; stupid, blundering, self-contented Fritz.
+
+She pulled the check-string and gave the order, "Home!"
+
+In her present condition she felt unable to go into Society.
+
+When she got to Cadogan Square she said to the footman who opened the
+door:
+
+"His lordship isn't in yet?"
+
+"No, my lady."
+
+"Did he say what time he would be in to-night?"
+
+"No, my lady."
+
+The man paused, then added:
+
+"His lordship told Mr. Lucas not to wait up."
+
+"Mr. Lucas" was Lord Holme's valet.
+
+It seemed to Lady Holme as if there were a significant, even a slightly
+mocking, sound in the footman's voice. She stared at him. He was a thin,
+swarthy young man, with lantern jaws and a very long, pale chin. When
+she looked at him he dropped his eyes.
+
+"Bring me some lemonade to the drawing-room in ten minutes," she said.
+
+"Yes, my lady."
+
+"In ten minutes, not before. Turn on all the lights in the
+drawing-room."
+
+"Yes, my lady."
+
+The man went before her up the staircase, turned on the lights, stood
+aside to let her pass and then went softly down. Lady Holme rang for
+Josephine.
+
+"Take my cloak and then go to bed," she said.
+
+Josephine took the cloak and went out, shutting the door.
+
+"Ten minutes!" Lady Holme said to herself.
+
+She sat down on the sofa on which she had sat for a moment alone after
+her song at the dinner-party, the song murdered by Miss Filberte. The
+empty, brilliantly-lit rooms seemed unusually large. She glanced round
+them with inward-looking eyes. Here she was at midnight sitting quite
+alone in her own house. And she wished to do something decisive,
+startling as the cannon shot sometimes fired from a ship to disperse a
+fog wreath. That was the reason why she had told the footman to come in
+ten minutes. She thought that in ten minutes she might make up her mind.
+If she decided upon doing something that required an emissary the man
+would be there.
+
+She looked at the little silver box she had taken up that night when she
+was angry, then at the grand piano in the further room. The two things
+suggested to her two women--the woman of hot temper and the woman of
+sweetness and romance. What was she to-night, and what was she going to
+do? Nothing, probably. What could she do? Again she glanced round the
+rooms. It seemed to her that she was like an actress in an intense,
+passionate _role_, who is paralysed by what is called in the theatre "a
+stage wait." She ought to play a tremendous scene, now, at once, but the
+person with whom she was to play it did not come on to the stage. She
+had worked herself up for the scene. The emotion, the passion, the
+force, the fury were alive, were red hot within her, and she could not
+set them free. She remained alone upon the stage in a sort of horror of
+dumbness, a horror of inaction.
+
+The footman came in quietly with the lemonade on a tray. He put it down
+on a table by Lady Holme.
+
+"Is there anything else, my lady?"
+
+She supposed that the question was meant as a very discreet hint to her
+that the man would be glad to go to bed. For a moment she did not reply,
+but kept him waiting. She was thinking rapidly, considering whether she
+would do the desperate thing or not, whether she would summon one of
+the actors for the violent scene her nature demanded persistently that
+night.
+
+After the opera she had been due at a ball to which Leo Ulford was
+going. She had promised to go in to supper with him and to arrive by a
+certain hour. He was wondering, waiting, now, at this moment. She knew
+that. The house was in Eaton Square, not far off. Should she send the
+footman with a note to Leo, saying that she was too tired to come to the
+ball but that she was sitting up at home? That was what she was rapidly
+considering while the footman stood waiting. Leo would come, and
+then--presently--Lord Holme would come. And then? Then doubtless would
+happen the scene she longed for, longed for with a sort of almost crazy
+desire such as she had never felt before.
+
+She glanced up and saw an astonished expression upon the footman's pale
+face. How long had she kept him there waiting? She had no idea.
+
+"There is nothing else," she said slowly.
+
+She paused, then added, reluctantly:
+
+"You can go to bed."
+
+The man went softly out of the room. As he shut the door she breathed
+a deep sigh, that was almost a sob. So difficult had she found it to
+govern herself, not to do the crazy thing.
+
+She poured out the lemonade and put ice into it.
+
+As she did so she made grimaces, absurd grimaces of pain and misery,
+like those on the faces of the two women in Mantegna's picture of Christ
+and the Marys in the Brera at Milan. They are grotesque, yet wonderfully
+moving in their pitiless realism. But tears fall from the eyes of
+Mantegna's women and no tears fell from Lady Holme's eyes. Still making
+grimaces, she sipped the lemonade. Then she put down the glass, leaned
+back on the sofa and shut her eyes. Her face ceased to move, and became
+beautiful again in its stillness. She remained motionless for a long
+time, trying to obtain the mastery over herself. In act she had obtained
+it already, but not in emotion. Indeed, the relinquishing of violence,
+the sending of the footman to bed, seemed to have increased the passion
+within her. And now she felt it rising till she was afraid of being
+herself, afraid of being this solitary woman, feeling intensely and able
+to do nothing. It seemed to her as if such a passion of jealousy, and
+desire for immediate expression of it in action, as flamed within her,
+must wreak disaster upon her like some fell disease, as if she were in
+immediate danger, even in immediate physical danger. She lay still like
+one determined to meet it bravely, without flinching, without a sign of
+cowardice.
+
+But suddenly she felt that she had made a mistake in dismissing the
+footman, that the pain of inaction was too great for her to bear. She
+could not just--do nothing. She could not, and she got up swiftly and
+rang the bell. The man did not return. She pressed the bell again. After
+three or four minutes he came in, looking rather flushed and put out.
+
+"I want you to take a note to Eaton Square," she said. "It will be ready
+in five minutes."
+
+"Yes, my lady."
+
+She went to her writing table and wrote this note to Leo Ulford:
+
+
+  "DEAR MR. ULFORD,--I am grieved to play you false, but I am too
+  tired to-night to come on. Probably you are amusing yourself. I
+  am sitting here alone over such a dull book. One can't go to bed
+  at twelve, somehow, even if one is tired. The habit of the season's
+  against early hours and one couldn't sleep. Be nice and come in for
+  five minutes on your way home, and tell me all about it. I know you
+  pass the end of the square, so it won't be out of your way.--Yours
+  very sincerely,   V. H."
+
+
+After writing this note Lady Holme hesitated for a moment, then she went
+to a writing table, opened a drawer and took out a tiny, flat key. She
+enclosed it in two sheets of thick note paper, folded the note also
+round it, and put it into an envelope which she carefully closed.
+After writing Leo Ulford's name on the envelope she rang again for the
+footman.
+
+"Take this to Eaton Square," she said, naming the number of the house.
+"And give it to Mr. Ulford yourself. Go in a hansom. When you have given
+Mr. Ulford the note come straight back in the hansom and let me know.
+After that you can go to bed. Do you understand?"
+
+"Yes, my lady."
+
+The man went out.
+
+Lady Holme stood up to give him the note. She remained standing after he
+had gone. An extraordinary sensation of relief had come to her. Action
+had lessened her pain, had removed much of the pressure of emotion upon
+her heart. For a moment she felt almost happy.
+
+She sat down again and took up a book. It was a book of poems written by
+a very young girl whom she knew. There was a great deal about sorrow in
+the poems, and sorrow was always alluded to as a person; now flitting
+through a forest in the autumn among the dying leaves, now bending over
+a bed, now walking by the sea at sunset watching departing ships, now
+standing near the altar at a wedding. The poems were not good. On the
+other hand, they were not very bad.
+
+They had some grace, some delicacy here and there, now and then a touch
+of real, if by no means exquisite, sentiment. At this moment Lady Holme
+found them soothing. There was a certain music in them and very little
+reality. They seemed to represent life as a pensive phantasmagoria
+of bird songs, fading flowers, dying lights, soft winds and rains and
+sighing echoes.
+
+She read on and on. Sometimes a hard thought intruded itself upon her
+mind--the thought of Leo Ulford with the latch-key of her husband's
+house in his hand. That thought made the poems seem to her remarkably
+unlike life.
+
+She looked at the clock. The footman had been away long enough to do his
+errand. Just as she was thinking this he came into the room.
+
+"Well?" she said.
+
+"I gave Mr. Ulford the note, my lady."
+
+"Then you can go to bed. Good-night. I'll put out the lights here."
+
+"Thank you, my lady."
+
+As he went away she turned again to the poems; but now she could not
+read them. Her eyes rested upon them, but her mind took in nothing of
+their meaning. Presently--very soon--she laid the book down and sat
+listening. The footman had shut the drawing-room door. She got up and
+opened it. She wanted to hear the sound of the latch-key being put into
+the front door by Leo Ulford. It seemed to her as if that sound would
+be like the _leit motif_ of her determination to govern, to take her own
+way, to strike a blow against the selfish egoism of men. After opening
+the door she sat down close to it and waited, listening.
+
+Some minutes passed. Then she heard--not the key put into the hall
+door; it had not occurred to her that she was much too far away to hear
+that--but the bang of the door being shut.
+
+Quickly she closed the drawing-room door, went back to the distant sofa,
+sat down upon it and began to turn over the poems once more. She even
+read one quite carefully. As she finished it the door was opened.
+
+She looked up gaily to greet Leo and saw her husband coming into the
+room.
+
+She was greatly startled. It had never occurred to her that Fritz was
+quite as likely to arrive before Leo Ulford as Leo Ulford to arrive
+before Fritz. Why had she never thought of so obvious a possibility? She
+could not imagine. The difference between the actuality and her intense
+and angry conception of what it would be, benumbed her mind for an
+instant. She was completely confused. She sat still with the book of
+poems on her lap, and gazed at Lord Holme as he came towards her, taking
+long steps and straddling his legs as if he imagined he had a horse
+under him. The gay expression had abruptly died away from her face and
+she looked almost stupid.
+
+"Hulloa!" said Lord Holme, as he saw her.
+
+She said nothing.
+
+"Thought you were goin' to the Blaxtons to-night," he added.
+
+She made a strong effort and smiled.
+
+"I meant to, but I felt tired after the opera."
+
+"Why don't you toddle off to bed then?"
+
+"I feel tired, I don't feel sleepy."
+
+Lord Holme stared at her, put his hand into his trousers pocket and
+pulled out his cigarette-case. Lady Holme knew that he had been in a
+good humour when he came home, and that the sight of her sitting up in
+the drawing-room had displeased him. She had seen a change come into his
+face. He had been looking gay. He began to look glum and turned his eyes
+away from her.
+
+"What have you been up to?" she asked, with a sudden light gaiety and
+air of comradeship.
+
+"Club--playin' bridge," he answered, lighting a cigarette.
+
+He shot a glance at her sideways as he spoke, a glance that was meant
+to be crafty. If she had not been excited and horribly jealous, such
+a glance would probably have amused her, even made her laugh. Fritz's
+craft was very transparent. But she could not laugh now. She knew he was
+telling her the first lie that had occurred to him.
+
+"Lucky?" she asked, still preserving her light and casual manner.
+
+"Middlin'," he jerked out.
+
+He sat down in an armchair and slowly stretched his legs, staring up at
+the ceiling. Lady Holme began to think rapidly, feverishly.
+
+Had he locked the front door when he came in? Very much depended upon
+whether he had or had not. The servants had all gone to bed. Not one of
+them would see that the house was closed for the night. Fritz was a
+very casual person. He often forgot to do things he had promised to do,
+things that ought to be done. On the other hand, there were moments
+when his memory was excellent. If she only knew which mood had been his
+to-night she thought she would feel calmer. The uncertainty in which she
+was made mind and body tingle. If Fritz had remembered to lock the door,
+Leo Ulford would try to get in, fail, and go away. But if he had
+not remembered, at any moment Leo Ulford might walk into the room
+triumphantly with the latch-key in his hand. And it was nearly half-past
+twelve.
+
+She wished intensely that she knew what Fritz had done.
+
+"What's up?" he said abruptly.
+
+"Up?" she said with an uncontrollable start.
+
+"Yes, with you?"
+
+"Nothing. What d'you mean?"
+
+"Why, you looked as if--don't you b'lieve I've been playin' bridge?"
+
+"Of course I do. Really, Fritz, how absurd you are!"
+
+It was evident that he, too, was not quite easy to-night. If he had a
+conscience, surely it was pricking him. Fierce anger flamed up again
+suddenly in Lady Holme, and the longing to lash her husband. Yet even
+this anger did not take away the anxiety that beset her, the wish that
+she had not done the crazy thing. The fact of her husband's return
+before Leo's arrival seemed to have altered her action, made it far more
+damning. To have been found with Leo would have been compromising, would
+have roused Fritz's anger. She wanted to rouse his anger. She had meant
+to rouse it. But when she looked at Fritz she did not like the thought
+of Leo walking in at this hour holding the latch-key in his hand. What
+had Fritz done that night to Rupert Carey? What would he do to-night
+if--?
+
+"What the deuce is up with you?"
+
+Lord Holme drew in his legs, sat up and stared with a sort of uneasy
+inquiry which he tried to make hard. She laughed quickly, nervously.
+
+"I'm tired, I tell you. It was awfully hot at the opera."
+
+She put some more ice into the lemonade, and added:
+
+"By the way, Fritz, I suppose you locked up all right?"
+
+"Locked up what?"
+
+"The front door. All the servants have gone to bed, you know."
+
+No sooner had she spoken the last words than she regretted them. If Leo
+did get in they took away all excuse. She might have pretended he had
+been let in. He would have had to back her up. It would have been mean
+of her, of course. Still, seeing her husband there, Leo would have
+understood, would have forgiven her. Women are always forgiven such
+subterfuges in unfortunate moments. What a fool she was to-night!
+
+"That don't matter," said her husband, shortly.
+
+"But--but it does. You know how many burglaries there are. Why, only
+the other night Mrs. Arthur came home from a ball and met two men on the
+stairs."
+
+"I pity any men I found on my stairs," he returned composedly, touching
+the muscle of his left arm with his right hand.
+
+He chuckled.
+
+"They'd be sorry for themselves, I'll bet," he added.
+
+He put down his cigarette and took out another slowly, leisurely. Lady
+Holme longed to strike him. His conceited composure added fuel to the
+flame of her anxiety.
+
+"Well, anyhow, I don't care to run these risks in a place like London,
+Fritz," she said almost angrily. "Have you locked up or not?"
+
+"Damned if I remember," he drawled.
+
+She did not know whether he was deliberately trying to irritate her or
+whether he really had forgotten, but she felt it impossible to remain
+any longer in uncertainty.
+
+"Very well, then, I shall go down and see," she said.
+
+And she laid the book of poems on a table and prepared to get up from
+the sofa.
+
+"Rot!" said Lord Holme; "if you're nervous, I'll go."
+
+She leaned back.
+
+"Very well."
+
+"In a minute."
+
+He struck a match and let it out.
+
+"Do go now, there's a good dog," she said coaxingly.
+
+He struck another match and held it head downwards.
+
+"You needn't hurry a feller."
+
+He tapped his cigarette gently on his knee, and applied the flame to it.
+
+"That's better."
+
+Lady Holme moved violently on the sofa. She had a pricking sensation all
+over her body, and her face felt suddenly very hot, as if she had fever.
+A ridiculous, but painful idea started up suddenly in her mind. Could
+Fritz suspect anything? Was he playing with her? She dismissed it at
+once as the distorted child of a guilty conscience. Fritz was not that
+sort of man. He might be a brute sometimes, but he was never a subtle
+brute. He blew two thin lines of smoke out through his nostrils, now
+with a sort of sensuous, almost languid, deliberation, and watched them
+fade away in the brilliantly-lit room. Lady Holme resolved to adopt
+another manner, more in accord with her condition of tense nervousness.
+
+"When I ask you to do a thing, Fritz, you might have the decency to
+do it," she said sharply. "You're forgetting what's due to me--to any
+woman."
+
+"Don't fuss at this time of night."
+
+"I want to go to bed, but I'm not going till I know the house is
+properly shut up. Please go at once and see."
+
+"I never knew you were such a coward," he rejoined without stirring.
+"Who was at the opera?"
+
+"I won't talk to you till you do what I ask."
+
+"That's a staggerin' blow."
+
+She sprang up with an exclamation of anger. Her nerves were on edge and
+she felt inclined to scream out.
+
+"I never thought you could be so--such a cad to a woman, Fritz," she
+said.
+
+She moved towards the door. As she did so she heard a cab in the square
+outside, a rattle of wheels, then silence. It had stopped. Her heart
+seemed to stand still too. She knew now that she was a coward, though
+not in the way Fritz meant. She was a coward with regard to him.
+Her jealousy had prompted her to do a mad thing. In doing it she had
+actually meant to produce a violent scene. It had seemed to her that
+such a scene would relieve the tension of her nerves, of her heart,
+would clear the air. But now that the scene seemed imminent--if Fritz
+had forgotten, and she was certain he had forgotten, to lock the
+door--she felt heart and nerves were failing her. She felt that she
+had risked too much, far too much. With almost incredible swiftness she
+remembered her imprudence in speaking to Carey at Arkell House and how
+it had only served to put a weapon into her husband's hand, a weapon he
+had not scrupled to use in his selfish way to further his own pleasure
+and her distress. That stupid failure had not sufficiently warned her,
+and now she was on the edge of some greater disaster. She was positive
+that Leo Ulford was in the cab which had just stopped, and it was too
+late now to prevent him from entering the house. Lord Holme had got
+up from his chair and stood facing her. He looked quite pleasant. She
+thought of the change that would come into his face in a moment and
+turned cold.
+
+"Don't cut up so deuced rough," he said; "I'll go and lock up."
+
+So he had forgotten. He took a step towards the drawing-room door.
+But now she felt that at all costs she must prevent him from going
+downstairs, must gain a moment somehow. Suddenly she swayed slightly.
+
+"I feel--awfully faint," she said.
+
+She went feebly, but quickly, to the window which looked on to the
+Square, drew away the curtain, opened the window and leaned out. The cab
+had stopped before their door, and she saw Leo Ulford standing on the
+pavement with his back to the house. He was feeling in his pocket,
+evidently for some money to give to the cabman. If she could only
+attract his attention somehow and send him away! She glanced back. Fritz
+was coming towards her with a look of surprise on his face.
+
+"Leave me alone," she said unevenly. "I only want some air."
+
+"But--"
+
+"Leave me--oh, do leave me alone!"
+
+He stopped, but stood staring at her in blank amazement. She dared not
+do anything. Leo Ulford stretched out his arm towards the cabman, who
+bent down from his perch. He took the money, looked at it, then bent
+down again, showing it to Leo and muttering something. Doubtless he was
+saying that it was not enough. She turned round again sharply to Fritz.
+
+"Fritz," she said, "be a good dog. Go upstairs to my room and fetch me
+some eau de Cologne, will you?"
+
+"But--"
+
+"It's on my dressing-table--the gold bottle on the right. You know. I
+feel so bad. I'll stay here. The air will bring me round perhaps."
+
+She caught hold of the curtain, like a person on the point of swooning.
+
+"All right," he said, and he went out of the room.
+
+She watched till he was gone, then darted to the window and leaned out.
+
+She was too late. The cab was driving off and Leo was gone. He must have
+entered the house.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII
+
+BEFORE she had time to leave the window she heard a step in the room.
+She turned and saw Leo Ulford, smiling broadly--like a great boy--and
+holding up the latch-key she had sent him. At the sight of her face his
+smile died away.
+
+"Go--go!" she whispered, putting out her hand. "Go at once!"
+
+"Go! But you told me--"
+
+"Go! My husband's come back. He's in the house. Go quickly. Don't make a
+sound. I'll explain to-morrow."
+
+She made a rapid, repeated gesture of her hands towards the door,
+frowning. Leo Ulford stood for an instant looking heavy and sulky, then,
+pushing out his rosy lips in a sort of indignant pout, he swung round
+on his heels. As he did so, Lord Holme came into the room holding the
+bottle of eau de Cologne. When he saw Leo he stopped. Leo stopped too,
+and they stood for a moment staring at each other. Lady Holme, who was
+still by the open window, did not move. There was complete silence in
+the room. Then Leo dropped the latch-key. It fell on the thick carpet
+without a noise. He made a hasty, lumbering movement to pick it up, but
+Lord Holme was too quick for him. When Lady Holme saw the key in her
+husband's hand she moved at last and came forward into the middle of the
+room.
+
+"Mr. Ulford's come to tell me about the Blaxtons' dance," she said.
+
+She spoke in her usual light voice, without tremor or uncertainty. Her
+face was perfectly calm and smiling. Leo Ulford cleared his throat.
+
+"Yes," he said loudly, "about the Blaxtons' dance."
+
+Lord Holme stood looking at the latch-key. Suddenly his face swelled up
+and became bloated, and large veins stood out in his brown forehead.
+
+"What's this key?" he said.
+
+He held it out towards his wife. Neither she nor Leo Ulford replied to
+his question.
+
+"What's this key?" he repeated.
+
+"The key of Mr. Ulford's house, I suppose," said Lady Holme. "How should
+I know?"
+
+"I'm not askin' you," said her husband.
+
+He came a step nearer to Leo.
+
+"Why the devil don't you answer?" he said to him.
+
+"It's my latch-key," said Leo, with an attempt at a laugh.
+
+Lord Holme flung it in his face.
+
+"You damned liar!" he said. "It's mine."
+
+And he struck him full in the face where the key had just struck him.
+
+Leo returned the blow. When she saw that, Lady Holme passed the two men
+and went quickly out of the room, shutting the door behind her. Holding
+her hands over her ears, she hurried upstairs to her bedroom. It was in
+darkness. She felt about on the wall for the button that turned on
+the electric light, but could not find it. Her hands, usually deft and
+certain in their movements, seemed to have lost the sense of touch. It
+was as if they had abruptly been deprived of their minds. She felt
+and felt. She knew the button was there. Suddenly the room was full of
+light. Without being aware of it she had found the button and turned
+it. In the light she looked down at her hands and saw that they were
+trembling violently. She went to the door and shut it. Then she sat down
+on the sofa at the foot of the bed. She clasped her hands together in
+her lap, but they went on trembling. Pulses were beating in her eyelids.
+She felt utterly degraded, like a scrupulously clean person who has been
+rolled in the dirt. And she fancied she heard a faint and mysterious
+sound, pathetic and terrible, but very far away--the white angel in her
+weeping.
+
+And the believers in the angel--were they weeping too?
+
+She found herself wondering as a sleeper wonders in a dream.
+
+Presently she got up. She could not sit there and see her hands
+trembling. She did not walk about the room, but went over to the
+dressing-table and stood by it, resting her hands upon it and leaning
+forward. The attitude seemed to relieve her. She remained there for a
+long time, scarcely thinking at all, only feeling degraded, unclean. The
+sight of physical violence in her own drawing-room, caused by her, had
+worked havoc in her. She had always thought she understood the brute in
+man. She had often consciously administered to it. She had coaxed
+it, flattered it, played upon it even--surely--loved it. Now she had
+suddenly seen it rush out into the full light, and it had turned her
+sick.
+
+The gold things on the dressing-table--bottles, brushes, boxes,
+trays--looked offensive. They were like lies against life, frauds.
+Everything in the pretty room was like a lie and a fraud. There ought to
+be dirt, ugliness about her. She ought to stand with her feet in mud and
+look on blackness. The angel in her shuddered at the siren in her now,
+as at a witch with power to evoke Satanic things, and she forgot the
+trembling of her hands in the sensation of the trembling of her soul.
+The blow of Fritz, the blow of Leo Ulford, had both struck her. She felt
+a beaten creature.
+
+The door opened. She did not turn round, but she saw in the glass her
+husband come in. His coat was torn. His waistcoat and shirt were almost
+in rags. There was blood on his face and on his right hand. In his
+eyes there was an extraordinary light, utterly unlike the light of
+intelligence, but brilliant, startling; flame from the fire by which the
+animal in human nature warms itself. In the glass she saw him look at
+her. The light seemed to stream over her, to scorch her. He went into
+his dressing-room without a word, and she heard the noise of water being
+poured out and used for washing. He must be bathing his wounds, getting
+rid of the red stains.
+
+She sat down on the sofa at the foot of the bed and listened to the
+noise of the water. At last it stopped and she heard drawers being
+violently opened and shut, then a tearing sound. After a silence her
+husband came into the room again with his forehead bound up in a silk
+handkerchief, which was awkwardly knotted behind his head. Part of
+another silk handkerchief was loosely tied round his right hand. He came
+forward, stood in front of her and looked at her, and she saw now that
+there was an expression almost of exultation on his face. She felt
+something fall into her lap. It was the latch-key she had sent to Leo
+Ulford.
+
+"I can tell you he's sorry he ever saw that--damned sorry," said Lord
+Holme.
+
+And he laughed.
+
+Lady Holme took the key up carefully and put it down on the sofa. She
+was realising something, realising that her husband was feeling happy.
+When she had laid down the key she looked up at him and there was an
+intense scrutiny in her eyes. Suddenly it seemed to her as if she were
+standing up and looking down on him, as if she were the judge, he the
+culprit in this matter. The numbness left her mind. She was able to
+think swiftly again and her hands stopped trembling. That look of
+exultation in her husband's eyes had changed everything.
+
+"Sit down, I want to speak to you," she said.
+
+She was surprised by the calm sound of her own voice.
+
+Lord Holme looked astonished. He shifted the bandage on his hand and
+stood where he was.
+
+"Sit down," she repeated.
+
+"Well!" he said.
+
+And he sat down.
+
+"I suppose you came up here to turn me out of the house?" she said.
+
+"You deserve it," he muttered.
+
+But even now he did not look angry. There was a sort of savage glow on
+his face. It was evident that the violent physical effort he had just
+made, and the success of it, had irresistibly swept away his fury for
+the moment. It might return. Probably it would return. But for the
+moment it was gone. Lady Holme knew Fritz, and she knew that he
+was feeling good all over. The fact that he could feel thus in such
+circumstances set the brute in him before her as it had never been set
+before--in a glare of light.
+
+"And what do you deserve?" she asked.
+
+All her terror had gone utterly. She felt mistress of herself.
+
+"When I went to thrash Carey he was so drunk I couldn't touch him. This
+feller showed fight but he was a baby in my hands. I could do anything I
+liked with him," said Lord Holme. "Gad! Talk of boxin'--"
+
+He looked at his bandaged hand and laughed again triumphantly. Then,
+suddenly, a sense of other things than his physical strength seemed to
+return upon him. His face changed, grew lowering, and he thrust forward
+his under jaw, opening his mouth to speak. Lady Holme did not give him
+time.
+
+"Yes, I sent Leo Ulford the latch-key," she said. "You needn't ask. I
+sent it, and told him to come to-night. D'you know why?"
+
+Lord Holme's face grew scarlet.
+
+"Because you're a--"
+
+She stopped him before he could say the irrevocable word.
+
+"Because I mean to have the same liberty as the man I've married,"
+she said. "I asked Leo Ulford here, and I intended you should find him
+here."
+
+"You didn't. You thought I wasn't comin' home."
+
+"Why should I have thought such a thing?" she said, swiftly, sharply.
+
+Her voice had an edge to it.
+
+"You meant not to come home, then?"
+
+She read his stupidity at a glance, the guilty mind that had blundered,
+thinking its intention known when it was not known. He began to deny it,
+but she stopped him. At this moment, and exactly when she ought surely
+to have been crushed by the weight of Fritz's fury, she dominated him.
+Afterwards she wondered at herself, but not now.
+
+"You meant not to come home?"
+
+For once Lord Holme showed a certain adroitness. Instead of replying to
+his wife he retorted:
+
+"You meant me to find Ulford here! That's a good 'un! Why, you tried all
+you knew to keep him out."
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Well, then?"
+
+"I wanted--but you'd never understand."
+
+"He does," said Lord Holme.
+
+He laughed again, got up and walked about the room, fingering his
+bandages. Then suddenly, he turned on Lady Holme and said savagely:
+
+"And you do."
+
+"I?"
+
+"Yes, you. There's lots of fellers that would--"
+
+"Stop!" said Lady Holme, in a voice of sharp decision.
+
+She got up too. She felt that she could not say what she meant to say
+sitting down.
+
+"Fritz," she added, "you're a fool. You may be worse. I believe you
+are. But one thing's certain--you're a fool. Even in wickedness you're a
+blunderer."
+
+"And what are you?" he said.
+
+"I!" she answered, coming a step nearer. "I'm not wicked."
+
+A sudden, strange desire came to her, a desire--as she had slangily
+expressed it to Robin Pierce--to "trot out" the white angel whom she had
+for so long ignored or even brow-beaten. Was the white angel there? Some
+there were who believed so. Robin Pierce, Sir Donald, perhaps others.
+And these few believers gave Lady Holme courage. She remembered them,
+she relied on them at this moment.
+
+"I'm not wicked," she repeated.
+
+She looked into her husband's face.
+
+"Don't you know that?"
+
+He was silent.
+
+"Perhaps you'd rather I was," she continued. "Don't men prefer it?"
+
+He stared first at her, then at the carpet. A puzzled look came into his
+face.
+
+"But I don't care," she said, gathering resolution, and secretly
+calling, calling on the hidden woman, yet always with a doubt as to
+whether she was there in her place of concealment. "I don't care. I
+can't change my nature because of that. And surely--surely there must be
+some men who prefer refinement to vulgarity, purity to--"
+
+"Ulford, eh?" he interrupted.
+
+The retort struck like a whip on Lady Holme's temper. She forgot the
+believers in the angel and the angel too.
+
+"How dare you?" she exclaimed. "As if I--"
+
+He took up the latch-key and thrust it into her face. His sense of
+physical triumph was obviously dying away, his sense of personal outrage
+returning.
+
+"Good women don't do things like that," he said. "If it was known in
+London you'd be done for."
+
+"And you--may you do what you like openly, brazenly?"
+
+"Men's different," he said.
+
+The words and the satisfied way in which they were said made Lady Holme
+feel suddenly almost mad with rage. The truth of the statement, and the
+disgrace that it was truth, stirred her to the depths. At that moment
+she hated her husband, she hated all men. She remembered what Lady
+Cardington had said in the carriage as they were driving away from the
+Carlton after Mrs. Wolfstein's lunch, and her sense of impotent fury
+was made more bitter by the consciousness that women had chosen that
+men should be "different," or at least--if not that--had smilingly given
+them a license to be so. She wanted to say, to call out, so much that
+she said nothing. Lord Holme thought that for once he had been clever,
+almost intellectual. This was indeed a night of many triumphs for him.
+An intoxication of power surged up to his brain.
+
+"Men's made different and treated differently," he said. "And they'd
+never stand anything else."
+
+Lady Holme sat down again on the sofa. She put her right hand on her
+left hand and held it tightly in her lap.
+
+"You mean," she said, in a hard, quiet voice, "that you may humiliate
+your wife in the eyes of London and that she must just pretend that she
+enjoys it and go on being devoted to you? Well, I will not do either the
+one or the other. I will not endure humiliation quietly, and as to my
+devotion to you--I daresay it wouldn't take much to kill it. Perhaps
+it's dead already."
+
+No lie, perhaps, ever sounded more like truth than hers. At that moment
+she thought that probably it was truth.
+
+"Eh?" said Lord Holme.
+
+He looked suddenly less triumphant. His blunt features seemed altered
+in shape by the expression of blatant, boyish surprise, even amazement,
+that overspread them. His wife saw that, despite the incident of Leo
+Ulford's midnight visit, Fritz had not really suspected her of the
+uttermost faithlessness, that it had not occurred to him that perhaps
+her love for him was dead, that love was alive in her for another man.
+Had his conceit then no limits?
+
+And then suddenly another thought flashed into her mind. Was he, too,
+a firm, even a fanatical, believer in the angel? She had never numbered
+Fritz among that little company of believers. Him she had always set
+among the men who worship the sirens of the world. But now--? Can there
+be two men in one man as there can be two women in one woman? Suddenly
+Fritz was new to her, newer to her than on the day when she first met
+him. And he was complex. Fritz complex! She changed the word conceit.
+She called it trust. And tears rushed into her eyes. There were tears in
+her heart too. She looked up at her husband. The silk bandage over
+his forehead had been white. Now it was faintly red. As she looked she
+thought that the colour of the red deepened.
+
+"Come here, Fritz," she said softly.
+
+He moved nearer.
+
+"Bend down!"
+
+"Eh?"
+
+"Bend down your head."
+
+He bent down his huge form with a movement that had in it some
+resemblance to the movement of a child. She put up her hand and touched
+the bandage where it was red. She took her hand away. It was damp.
+
+A moment later Fritz was sitting in a low chair by the wash-hand stand
+in an obedient attitude, and a woman--was she siren or angel?--was
+bathing an ugly wound.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV
+
+AFTER that night Lady Holme began to do something she had never done
+before--to idealise her husband. Hitherto she had loved him without
+weaving pretty fancies round him, loved him crudely for his strength,
+his animalism, his powerful egoism and imperturbable self-satisfaction.
+She had loved him almost as a savage woman might love, though without
+her sense of slavery. Now a change came over her. She thought of Fritz
+in a different way, the new Fritz, the Fritz who was a believer in the
+angel. It seemed to her that he could be kept faithful most easily,
+most surely, by such an appeal as Robin Pierce would have loved. She had
+sought to rouse, to play upon the instincts of the primitive man. She
+had not gone very far, it is true, but her methods had been common,
+ordinary. She had undervalued Fritz's nature. That was what she felt
+now. He had behaved badly to her, had wronged her, but he had believed
+in her very much. She resolved to make his belief more intense. An
+expression on his face--only that--had wrought a vital change in her
+feeling towards him, her conception of him. She ranged him henceforth
+with Sir Donald, with Robin Pierce. He stood among the believers in the
+angel.
+
+She called upon the angel passionately, feverishly.
+
+There was strength in Lady Holme's character, and not merely strength
+of temper. When she was roused, confident, she could be resolute,
+persistent; could shut her eyes to side issues and go onward looking
+straight before her. Now she went onward and she felt a new force within
+her, a force that would not condescend to pettiness, to any groping in
+the mud.
+
+Lord Holme was puzzled. He felt the change in his wife, but did not
+understand it. Since the fracas with Leo Ulford their relations had
+slightly altered. Vaguely, confusedly, he was conscious of being pitied,
+yes, surely pitied by his wife. She shed a faint compassion, like a
+light cloud, over the glory of his wrongdoing. And the glory was abated.
+He felt a little doubtful of himself, almost as a son feels sometimes
+in the presence of his mother. For the first time he began to think of
+himself, now and then, as the inferior of his wife, began even, now and
+then, to think of man as the inferior of woman--in certain ways. Such a
+state of mind was very novel in him. He stared at it as a baby stares
+at its toes, with round amazement, inwardly saying, "Is this phenomenon
+part of me?"
+
+There was a new gentleness in Viola, a new tenderness. Both put him--as
+one lifted and dropped--a step below her. He pulled his bronze moustache
+over it with vigour.
+
+His wife showed no desire to control his proceedings, to know what
+he was about. When she spoke of Miss Schley she spoke kindly,
+sympathetically, but with a dainty, delicate pity, as one who secretly
+murmurs, "If she had only had a chance!" Lord Holme began to think it
+a sad thing that she had not had a chance. The mere thought sent the
+American a step down from her throne. She stood below him now, as he
+stood below Viola. It seemed to him that there was less resemblance
+between his wife and Miss Schley than he had fancied. He even said so to
+Lady Holme. The angel smiled. Somebody else in her smiled too. Once he
+remarked to the angel, _a propos de bottes_, "We men are awful brutes
+sometimes." Then he paused. As she said nothing, only looked very kind,
+he added, "I'll bet you think so, Vi?"
+
+It sounded like a question, but she preferred to give no answer, and he
+walked away shaking his head over the brutishness of men.
+
+The believers in the angel naturally welcomed the development in Lady
+Holme and the unbelievers laughed at it, especially those who had been
+at Arkell House and those who had been influenced by Pimpernel Schley's
+clever imitation. One night at the opera, when _Tannhauser_ was being
+given, Mr. Bry said of it, "I seem to hear the voice of Venus raised in
+the prayer of Elizabeth." Mrs. Wolfstein lifted large eyebrows over it,
+and remarked to Henry, in exceptionally guttural German:
+
+"If this goes on Pimpernel's imitation will soon be completely out of
+date."
+
+To be out of date--in Mrs. Wolfstein's opinion--was to be irremediably
+damned. Lady Cardington, Sir Donald Ulford, and one or two others began
+to feel as if their dream took form and stepped out of the mystic realm
+towards the light of day. Sir Donald seemed specially moved by the
+change. It was almost as if something within him blossomed, warmed by
+the breath of spring.
+
+Lady Holme wondered whether he knew of the fight between her husband and
+his son. She dared not ask him and he only mentioned Leo once. Then
+he said that Leo had gone down to his wife's country place in
+Hertfordshire. Lady Holme could not tell by his intonation whether he
+had guessed that there was a special reason for this departure. She was
+glad Leo had gone. The developing angel did not want to meet the man who
+had suffered from the siren's common conduct. Leo was not worth much.
+She knew that. But she realised now the meanness of having used him
+merely as a weapon against Fritz, and not only the meanness, but the
+vulgarity of the action. There were moments in which she was fully
+conscious that, despite her rank, she had not endured unsmirched close
+contact with the rampant commonness of London.
+
+One of the last great events of the season was to be a charity concert,
+got up by a Royal Princess in connection with a committee of well-known
+women to start a club for soldiers and sailors. Various amateurs and
+professionals were asked to take part in it, among them Lady Holme and
+Miss Schley. The latter had already accepted the invitation when Lady
+Holme received the Royal request, which was made _viva voce_ and was
+followed by a statement about the composition of the programme, in which
+"that clever Miss Schley" was named.
+
+Lady Holme hesitated. She had not met the American for some time and
+did not wish to meet her. Since she had bathed her husband's wound she
+knew--she could not have told how--that Miss Schley's power over him had
+lessened. She did not know what had happened between them. She did not
+know that anything had happened. And, as part of this new effort of
+hers, she had had the strength to beat down the vehement, the terrible
+curiosity--cold steel and fire combined--that is a part of jealousy.
+That curiosity, she told herself, belonged to the siren, not to the
+angel. But at this Royal request her temper waked, and with it many
+other children of her temperament. It was as if she had driven them into
+a dark cave and had rolled a great stone to the cave's mouth. Now the
+stone was pushed back, and in the darkness she heard them stirring,
+whispering, preparing to come forth.
+
+The Royal lady looked slightly surprised. She coughed and glanced at a
+watch she wore at her side.
+
+"I shall be delighted to do anything, ma'am," Lady Holme said quickly.
+
+When she received the programme she found that her two songs came
+immediately after "Some Imitations" by Miss Pimpernel Schley.
+
+She stood for a moment with the programme in her hand.
+
+"Some Imitations"; there was a certain crudeness about the statement, a
+crudeness and an indefiniteness combined. Who were to be the victims? At
+this moment, perhaps, they were being studied. Was she to be pilloried
+again as she had been pilloried that night at the British Theatre? The
+calm malice of the American was capable of any impudent act. It seemed
+to Lady Holme that she had perhaps been very foolish in promising to
+appear in the same programme with Miss Schley. Was it by accident that
+their names were put together? Lady Holme did not know who had arranged
+the order of the performances, but it occurred to her that there was
+attraction to the public in the contiguity, and that probably it was a
+matter of design. No other two women had been discussed and compared,
+smiled over and whispered about that season by Society as she and Miss
+Schley had been.
+
+For a moment, while she looked at the programme, she thought of the
+strange complications of feeling that are surely the fruit of an extreme
+civilisation. She saw herself caught in a spider's web of apparently
+frail, yet really powerful, threads spun by an invisible spider. Her
+world was full of gossamer playing the part of iron, of gossamer that
+was compelling, that made and kept prisoners. What freedom was there
+for her and women like her, what reality of freedom? Even beauty, birth,
+money were gossamer to hold the fly. For they concentrated the gaze of
+those terrible watchful eyes which govern lives, dominating actions,
+even dominating thoughts.
+
+She moved, had always moved, in a maze of complications. She saw them
+tiny yet intense, like ants in their hill. They stirred minds, hearts,
+as the ants stirred twigs, leaves, blossoms, and carried them to the
+hill for their own purposes. In this maze free will was surely lost. The
+beautiful woman of the world seems to the world to be a dominant being,
+to be imposing the yoke of her will on those around her. But is she
+anything but a slave?
+
+Why were she and Miss Schley enemies? Why had they been enemies from the
+moment they met? There was perhaps a reason for their hostility now,
+a reason in Fritz. But at the beginning what reason had there been?
+Civilisation manufactures reasons as the spider manufactures threads,
+because it is the deadly enemy of peace--manufactures reasons for all
+those thoughts and actions which are destructive of inward and exterior
+peace.
+
+For a moment it seemed to Lady Holme as if she and the American
+were merely victims of the morbid conditions amid which they lived;
+conditions which caused the natural vanity of women to become a
+destroying fever, the natural striving of women to please a venomous
+battle, the natural desire of women to be loved a fracas, in which
+clothes were the armour, modes of hair-dressing, manicure, perfumes,
+dyes, powder-puffs the weapons.
+
+What a tremendous, noisy nothingness it was, this state of being! How
+could an angel be natural in it,--be an angel at all?
+
+She laid down the programme and sighed. She felt a vague yet violent
+desire for release, for a fierce change, for something that would brush
+away the spider's web and set free her wings. Yet where would she fly?
+She did not know; probably against a window-pane. And the change would
+never come. She and Fritz--what could they ever be but a successful
+couple known in a certain world and never moving beyond its orbit?
+
+Perhaps for the first time the longing that she had often expressed
+in her singing, obedient to poet and composer, invaded her own soul.
+Without music she was what with music she had often seemed to be--a
+creature of wayward and romantic desires, a yearning spirit, a soaring
+flame.
+
+At that moment she could have sung better than she had ever sung.
+
+On the programme the names of her songs did not appear. They were
+represented by the letters A and B. She had not decided yet what she
+would sing. But now, moved by feeling to the longing for some action in
+which she might express it, she resolved to sing something in which she
+could at least flutter the wings she longed to free, something in
+which the angel could lift its voice, something that would delight
+the believers in the angel and be as far removed from Miss Schley's
+imitations as possible.
+
+After a time she chose two songs. One was English, by a young composer,
+and was called "Away." It breathed something of the spirit of the East.
+The man who had written it had travelled much in the East, had drawn
+into his lungs the air, into his nostrils the perfume, into his soul
+the meaning of desert places. There was distance in his music. There
+was mystery. There was the call of the God of Gold who lives in the sun.
+There was the sound of feet that travel. The second song she chose was
+French. The poem was derived from a writing of Jalalu'd dinu'r Rumi, and
+told this story.
+
+One day a man came to knock upon the door of the being he loved. A voice
+cried from within the house, "_Qui est la_?" "_C'est moi_!" replied
+the man. There was a pause. Then the voice answered, "This house cannot
+shelter us both together." Sadly the lover went away, went into the
+great solitude, fasted and prayed. When a long year had passed he came
+once more to the house of the one he loved, and struck again upon
+the door. The voice from within cried, "_Qui est la_?" "_C'est toi_!"
+whispered the lover. Then the door was opened swiftly and he passed in
+with outstretched arms.
+
+Having decided that she would sing these two songs, Lady Holme sat down
+to go through them at the piano. Just as she struck the first chord of
+the desert song a footman came in to know whether she was at home to
+Lady Cardington. She answered "Yes." In her present mood she longed
+to give out her feeling to an audience, and Lady Cardington was very
+sympathetic.
+
+In a minute she came in, looking as usual blanched and tired, dressed in
+black with some pale yellow roses in the front of her gown. Seeing Lady
+Holme at the piano she said, in her low voice with a thrill in it:
+
+"You are singing? Let me listen, let me listen."
+
+She did not come up to shake hands, but at once sat down at a short
+distance from the piano, leaned back, and gazed at Lady Holme with a
+strange expression of weary, yet almost passionate, expectation.
+
+Lady Holme looked at her and at the desert song. Suddenly she thought
+she would not sing it to Lady Cardington. There was too wild a spell
+in it for this auditor. She played a little prelude and sang an Italian
+song, full, as a warm flower of sweetness, of the sweetness of love. The
+refrain was soft as golden honey, soft and languorous, strangely sweet
+and sad. There was an exquisite music in the words of the refrain, and
+the music they were set to made their appeal more clinging, like the
+appeal of white arms, of red, parting lips.
+
+
+  "Torna in fior di giovinezza
+       Isaotta Blanzesmano,
+       Dice: Tutto al mondo e vano:
+   Nell'amore ogni dolcezza."
+
+
+Tears came into Lady Cardington's eyes as she listened, brimmed over and
+fell down upon her blanched cheeks. Each time the refrain recurred she
+moved her lips: "Dice: Tutto al mondo e vano: Nell'amore ogni dolcezza."
+
+Lady Holme's voice was like honey as she sang, and tears were in her
+eyes too. Each time the refrain fell from her heart she seemed to see
+another world, empty of gossamer threads, a world of spread wings,
+a world of--but such poetry and music do not tell you! Nor can you
+imagine. You can only dream and wonder, as when you look at the horizon
+line and pray for the things beyond.
+
+
+  "Tutto--tutto al mondo a vano:
+   Nell'amore ogni dolcezza."
+
+
+"Why do you sing like that to-day?" said Lady Cardington, wiping her
+eyes gently.
+
+"I feel like that to-day," Lady Holme said, keeping her hands on the
+keys in the last chord. There was a vagueness in her eyes, a sort of
+faint cloud of fear. While she was singing she had thought, "Have I
+known the love that shows the vanity of the world? Have I known the
+love in which alone all sweetness lives?" The thought had come in like a
+firefly through an open window. "Have I? Have I?"
+
+And something within her felt a stab of pain, something within her soul
+and yet surely a thousand miles away.
+
+"Tutto--tutto al mondo e vano," murmured Lady Cardington. "We feel that
+and we feel it, and--do you?"
+
+"To-day I seem to," answered Lady Holme.
+
+"When you sing that song you look like the love that gives all sweetness
+to men. Sing like that, look like that, and you--If Sir Donald had heard
+you!"
+
+Lady Holme got up from the piano.
+
+"Sir Donald!" she said.
+
+She came to sit down near Lady Cardington.
+
+"Sir Donald! Why do you say that?"
+
+And she searched Lady Cardington's eyes with eyes full of inquiry.
+
+Lady Cardington looked away. The wistful power that generally seemed a
+part of her personality had surely died out in her. There was something
+nervous in her expression, deprecating in her attitude.
+
+"Why do you speak about Sir Donald?" Lady Holme said.
+
+"Don't you know?"
+
+Lady Cardington looked up. There was an extraordinary sadness in her
+eyes, mingled with a faint defiance.
+
+"Know what?"
+
+"That Sir Donald is madly in love with you?"
+
+"Sir Donald! Sir Donald--madly anything!"
+
+She laughed, not as if she were amused, but as if she wished to do
+something else and chose to laugh instead. Lady Cardington sat straight
+up.
+
+"You don't understand anything but youth," she said.
+
+There was a sound of keen bitterness in her low voice.
+
+"And yet," she added, after a pause, "you can sing till you break the
+heart of age--break its heart."
+
+Suddenly she burst into a flood of tears. Lady Holme was so surprised
+that she did absolutely nothing, did not attempt to console, to inquire.
+She sat and looked at Lady Cardington's tall figure swayed by grief,
+listened to the sound of her hoarse, gasping sobs. And then, abruptly,
+as if someone came into the room and told her, she understood.
+
+"You love Sir Donald," she said.
+
+Lady Cardington looked up. Her tear-stained, distorted face seemed very
+old.
+
+"We both regret the same thing in the same way," she said. "We were both
+wretched in--in the time when we ought to have been happy. I thought--I
+had a ridiculous idea we might console each other. You shattered my
+hope."
+
+"I'm sorry," Lady Holme said.
+
+And she said it with more tenderness than she had ever before used to a
+woman.
+
+Lady Cardington pressed a pocket-handkerchief against her eyes.
+
+"Sing me that song again," she whispered. "Don't say anything more. Just
+sing it again and I'll go."
+
+Lady Holme went to the piano.
+
+
+  "Torna in fior di giovinezza
+       Isaotta Blanzesmano,
+       Dice: Tutto al mondo a vano:
+   Nell'amore ogni dolcezza."
+
+
+When the last note died away she looked towards the sofa. Lady
+Cardington was gone. Lady Holme leaned her arm on the piano and put her
+chin in her hand.
+
+"How awful to be old!" she thought.
+
+Half aloud she repeated the last words of the refrain: "Nell'amore ogni
+dolcezza." And then she murmured:
+
+"Poor Sir Donald!"
+
+And then she repeated, "Poor--" and stopped. Again the faint cloud of
+fear was in her eyes.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XV
+
+THE Charity Concert was to be given in Manchester House, one of the
+private palaces of London, and as Royalty had promised to be present,
+all the tickets were quickly sold. Among those who bought them were most
+of the guests who had been present at the Holmes' dinner-party when Lady
+Holme lost her temper and was consoled by Robin Pierce. Robin of course
+was in Rome, but Lady Cardington, Lady Manby, Mrs. Wolfstein, Sir
+Donald, Mr. Bry took seats. Rupert Carey also bought a ticket. He was
+not invited to great houses any more, but on this public occasion no one
+with a guinea to spend was unwelcome. To Lady Holme's surprise the day
+before the concert Fritz informed her that he was going too.
+
+"You, Fritz!" she exclaimed. "But it's in the afternoon."
+
+"What o' that?"
+
+"You'll be bored to death. You'll go to sleep. Probably you'll snore."
+
+"Not I."
+
+He straddled his legs and looked attentively at the toes of his boots.
+Lady Holme wondered why he was going. Had Miss Schley made a point of
+it? She longed to know. The cruel curiosity which the angel was ever
+trying to beat down rose up in her powerfully.
+
+"I say--"
+
+Her husband was speaking with some hesitation.
+
+"Well?"
+
+"Let's have a squint at the programme, will you?"
+
+"Here it is."
+
+She gave it to him and watched him narrowly as he looked quickly over
+it.
+
+"Hulloa!" he said.
+
+"What's the matter?"
+
+"Some Imitations," he said. "What's that mean?"
+
+"Didn't you know Miss Schley was a mimic?"
+
+"A mimic--not I! She's an actress."
+
+"Yes--now."
+
+"Now? When was she anythin' else?"
+
+"When she began in America. She was a mimic in the music-halls."
+
+"The deuce she was!"
+
+He stood looking very grave and puzzled for a minute, then he stared
+hard at his wife.
+
+"What did she mimic?"
+
+"I don't know--people."
+
+Again there was a silence. Then he said--
+
+"I say, I don't know that I want you to sing at that affair to-morrow."
+
+"But I must. Why not?"
+
+He hesitated, shifting from one foot to the other almost like a great
+boy.
+
+"I don't know what she's up to," he answered at last.
+
+"Miss Schley?"
+
+"Ah!"
+
+Lady Holme felt her heart beat faster. Was her husband going to open up
+a discussion of the thing that had been turning her life to gall during
+these last weeks--his flirtation, his _liaison_--if it were a _liaison_;
+she did not know--with the American? The woman who had begun to idealise
+Fritz and the woman who was desperately jealous of him both seemed to be
+quivering within her.
+
+"Do you mean--?" she began.
+
+She stopped, then spoke again in a quiet voice.
+
+"Do you mean that you think Miss Schley is going to do something unusual
+at the concert tomorrow?"
+
+"I dunno. She's the devil."
+
+There was a reluctant admiration in his voice, as there always is in
+the voice of a man when he describes a woman as gifted with infernal
+attributes, and this sound stung Lady Holme. It seemed to set that angel
+upon whom she was calling in the dust, to make of that angel a puppet,
+an impotent, even a contemptible thing.
+
+"My dear Fritz," she said in a rather loud, clear voice, like the voice
+of one speaking to a child, "my dear Fritz, you're surely aware that I
+have been the subject of Miss Schley's talent ever since she arrived in
+London?"
+
+"You! What d'you mean?"
+
+"You surely can't be so blind as not to have seen what all London has
+seen?"
+
+"What's all London seen?'
+
+"Why, that Miss Schley's been mimicking me!"
+
+"Mimickin' you!"
+
+The brown of his large cheeks was invaded by red.
+
+"But you have noticed it. I remember your speaking about it."
+
+"Not I!" he exclaimed with energy.
+
+"Yes. You spoke of the likeness between us, in expression, in ways of
+looking and moving."
+
+"That--I thought it was natural."
+
+"You thought it was natural?"
+
+There was a profound, if very bitter, compassion in her voice.
+
+"Poor old boy!" she added.
+
+Lord Holme looked desperately uncomfortable. His legs were in a most
+violent, even a most pathetic commotion, and he tugged his moustache
+with the fingers of both hands.
+
+"Damned cheek!" he muttered. "Damned cheek!"
+
+He turned suddenly as if he were going to stride about the room.
+
+"Don't get angry," said his wife. "I never did."
+
+He swung round and faced her.
+
+"D'you mean you've always known she was mimickin' you?"
+
+"Of course. From the very start."
+
+His face got redder.
+
+"I'll teach her to let my wife alone," he muttered. "To dare--my wife!"
+
+"I'm afraid it's a little late in the day to begin now," Lady Holme
+said. "Society's been laughing over it, and your apparent appreciation
+of it, the best part of the season."
+
+"My what?"
+
+"Your apparent enjoyment of the performance."
+
+And then she went quietly out of the room and shut the door gently
+behind her. But directly the door was shut she became another woman. Her
+mouth was distorted, her eyes shone, she rushed upstairs to her bedroom,
+locked herself in, threw herself down on the bed and pressed her face
+furiously against the coverlet.
+
+The fact that she had spoken at last to her husband of the insult she
+had been silently enduring, the insult he had made so far more bitter
+than it need have been by his conduct, had broken down something within
+her, some wall of pride behind which had long been gathering a flood
+of feeling. She cried now frantically, with a sort of despairing rage,
+cried and crushed herself against the bed, beating the pillows with her
+hands, grinding her teeth.
+
+What was the use of it all? What was the use of being beautiful, of
+being young, rich? What was the use of having married a man she had
+loved? What was the use? What was the use?
+
+"What's the use?" she sobbed the words out again and again.
+
+For the man was a fool, Fritz was a fool. She thought of him at that
+moment as half-witted. For he saw nothing, nothing. He was a blind man
+led by his animal passions, and when at last he was forced to see, when
+she came and, as it were, lifted his eyelids with her fingers, and said
+to him, "Look! Look at what has been done to me!" he could only be angry
+for himself, because the insult had attained him, because she happened
+to be his wife. It seemed to her, while she was crying there, that
+stupidity combined with egoism must have the power to kill even that
+vital, enduring thing, a woman's love. She had begun to idealise Fritz,
+but how could she go on idealising him? And she began for the first time
+really to understand--or to begin to understand--that there actually was
+something within her which was hungry, unsatisfied, something which was
+not animal but mental, or was it spiritual?--something not sensual, not
+cerebral, which cried aloud for sustenance. And this something did not,
+could never, cry to Fritz. It knew he could not give it what it wanted.
+Then to whom did it cry? She did not know.
+
+Presently she grew calmer and sat upon the bed, looking straight before
+her. Her mind returned upon itself. She seemed to go back to that point
+of time, just before Lady Cardington called, when she had the programme
+in her hand and thought of the gossamer threads that were as iron in her
+life, and in such lives as hers; then to move on to that other point of
+time when she laid down the programme, sighed, and was conscious of a
+violent desire for release, for something to come and lift a powerful
+hand and brush away the spider's web.
+
+But now, returning to this further moment in her life, she asked herself
+what would be left to her if the spider's web were gone? The believers
+in the angel? Perhaps she no longer included Fritz among them. The
+impotence of his mind seemed to her an impotence of heart just then. He
+was to her like a numbed creature, incapable of movement, incapable of
+thought, incapable of belief. Credulity--yes, but not belief. And
+so, when she looked at the believers, she saw but a few people: Robin
+Pierce, Sir Donald--whom else?
+
+And then she heard, as if far off, the song she would sing on the morrow
+at Manchester House.
+
+
+  "Torna in fior di giovinezza
+       Isaotta Blanzesmano,
+       Dice: Tutto al mondo a vano:
+   Nell'amore ogni dolcezza."
+
+
+And then she cried again, but no longer frantically; quietly, with a
+sort of childish despair and confusion. In her heart there had opened
+a dark space, a gulf. She peered into it and heard, deep down in it,
+hollow echoes resounding, and she recoiled from a vision of emptiness.
+
+  *  *  *  *  *  *  *
+
+On the following day Fritz drove her himself to Manchester House in a
+new motor he had recently bought. All the morning he had stayed at home
+and fidgeted about the house. It was obvious to his wife that he was in
+an unusually distracted frame of mind. He wanted to tell her something,
+yet could not do so. She saw that plainly, and she felt almost certain
+that since their interview of the previous day he had seen Miss Schley.
+She fancied that there had been a scene of some kind between them, and
+she guessed that Fritz had been hopelessly worsted in it and was very
+sorry for himself. There was a beaten look in his face, a very different
+look from that which had startled her when he came into her room after
+thrashing Leo Ulford. This time, however, her curiosity was not awake,
+and the fact that it was not awake marked a change in her. She felt
+to-day as if she did not care what Fritz had been doing or was going
+to do. She had suffered, she had concealed her suffering, she had tried
+vulgarly to pay Fritz out, she had failed. At the critical moment she
+had played the woman after he had played the man. He had thrashed the
+intruder whom she was using as a weapon, and she had bathed his wounds,
+made much of him, idealised him. She had done what any uneducated street
+woman would have done for "her man." And now she had suddenly come to
+feel as if there had always been an emptiness in her life, as if Fritz
+never had, never could fill it. The abruptness of the onset of this new
+feeling confused her. She did not know that a woman could be subject
+to a change of this kind. She did not understand it, realise what it
+portended, what would result from it. But she felt that, for the moment,
+at any rate, she could not get up any excitement about Fritz, his
+feelings, his doings. Whenever she thought of him she thought of his
+blundering stupidity, his blindness, sensuality and egoism. No doubt she
+loved him. Only, to-day, she did not feel as if she loved him or anyone.
+Yet she did not feel dull. On the contrary, she was highly strung,
+unusually sensitive. What she was most acutely conscious of was a
+sensation of lonely excitement, of solitary expectation. Fritz fidgeted
+about the house, and the fact that he did so gave her no more concern
+than if a little dog had been running to and fro. She did not want him
+to tell her what was the matter. On the other hand, she did want him not
+to tell her. Simply she did not care.
+
+He said nothing. Perhaps something in her look, her manner, kept him
+dumb.
+
+When they were in the motor on the way to Manchester House, he said:
+
+"I bet you'll cut out everybody."
+
+"Oh, there are all sorts of stars."
+
+"Well, mind you put 'em all out."
+
+It was evident to her that for some reason or other he was particularly
+anxious she should shine that afternoon. She meant to. She knew she was
+going to. But she had no desire to shine in order to gratify Fritz's
+egoism. Probably he had just had a quarrel with Miss Schley and
+wanted to punish her through his wife. The idea was not a pretty one.
+Unfortunately that circumstance did not ensure its not being a true one.
+
+"Mind you do, eh?" reiterated her husband, giving the steering wheel a
+twist and turning the car up Hamilton Place.
+
+"I shall try to sing well, naturally," she replied coldly. "I always
+do."
+
+"Of course--I know."
+
+There was something almost servile in his manner, an anxiety which was
+quite foreign to it as a rule.
+
+"That's a stunnin' dress," he added. "Keep your cloak well over it."
+
+She said nothing.
+
+"What's the row?" he asked. "Anythin' up?"
+
+"I'm thinking over my songs."
+
+"Oh, I see."
+
+She had silenced him for the moment.
+
+Very soon they were in a long line of carriages and motors moving slowly
+towards Manchester House.
+
+"Goin' to be a deuce of a crowd," said Fritz.
+
+"Naturally."
+
+"Wonder who'll be there?"
+
+"Everybody who's still in town."
+
+She bowed to a man in a hansom.
+
+"Who's that?"
+
+"Plancon. He's singing."
+
+"How long'll it be before you come on?"
+
+"Quite an hour, I think."
+
+"Better than bein' first, isn't it?"
+
+"Of course."
+
+"What are you goin' to sing?"
+
+"Oh--"
+
+She was about to say something impatient about his not knowing one tune
+from another, but she checked herself, and answered quietly:
+
+"An Italian song and a French song."
+
+"What about?"
+
+"Take care of that carriage in front--love."
+
+He looked at her sideways.
+
+"You're the one to sing about that," he said.
+
+She felt that he was admiring her beauty as if it were new to him. She
+did not care.
+
+At last they reached Manchester House. Fritz's place was taken by
+his chauffeur, and they got out. The crowd was enormous. Many people
+recognised Lady Holme and greeted her. Others, who did not know her
+personally, looked at her with open curiosity. A powdered footman came
+to show her to the improvised artists' room. Fritz prepared to follow.
+
+"Aren't you going into the concert-room?" she said.
+
+"Presently."
+
+"But--"
+
+"I'll take you up first."
+
+"Very well," she said. "But it isn't the least necessary."
+
+He only stuck out his under jaw. She realised that Miss Schley would
+be in the artists' room and said nothing more. They made their way very
+slowly to the great landing on the first floor of the house, from which
+a maze of reception rooms opened. Mr. and Mrs. Ongrin, the immensely
+rich Australians who were the owners of the house, were standing there
+ready to receive the two Royal Princesses who were expected, and Mr.
+Ongrin took from a basket on a table beside him a great bouquet of
+honey-coloured roses, and offered it to Lady Holme with a hearty word of
+thanks to her for singing.
+
+She took the roses with a look of pleasure.
+
+"How sweet of you! They suit my song," she said.
+
+She was thinking of the Italian song.
+
+Mr. Ongrin, who was a large, loose-limbed man, with straw-coloured hair
+turning grey, and a broken nose, looked genial and confused, and she
+went on, still closely followed by Fritz.
+
+"This is the room for the performers, my lady," said the footman,
+showing them into a large, green drawing-room, with folding doors at one
+end shut off by an immense screen.
+
+"Is the platform behind the screen?" Lady Holme asked.
+
+"Yes, my lady. The ladies' cloak-room is on the left--that door, my
+lady."
+
+There were already several people in the room, standing about and
+looking tentative. Lady Holme knew most of them. One was a French
+actor who was going to give a monologue; very short, very stout, very
+intelligent-looking, with a face that seemed almost too flexible to be
+human. Two or three were singers from the Opera House. Another was an
+aristocratic amateur, an intimate friend of Lady Holme's, who had a
+beautiful contralto voice. Several of the committee were there too,
+making themselves agreeable to the artists. Lady Holme began to speak
+to the French actor. Fritz stood by. He scarcely understood a word of
+French, and always looked rather contemptuous when it was talked in
+his presence. The French actor appealed to him on some point in the
+conversation. He straddled his legs, uttered a loud, "Oh, wee! Oh, wee!
+wee!" and laughed.
+
+"Lord Holme est tout a fait de mon avis!" cried the comedian.
+
+"Evidemment," she answered, wishing Fritz would go. Miss Schley had not
+come yet. She was certain to be effectively late, as she had been at
+Mrs. Wolfstein's lunch-party. Lady Holme did not feel as if she cared
+whether she came early or late, whether she were there or not. She was
+still companioned by her curious sensation of the morning, a sensation
+of odd loneliness and detachment, combined with excitement--but an
+excitement which had nothing to do with the present. It seemed to her as
+if she were a person leaning out of a window and looking eagerly along
+a road. People were in the room behind her, voices were speaking, things
+were happening there, but they had nothing to do with her. That which
+had to do with her was coming down the road. She could not see yet what
+it was, but she could hear the faint sound of its approach.
+
+The comedian spoke to someone else. She went into the cloak-room and
+took off her motor cloak. As she glanced into a mirror to see if all the
+details of her gown were perfect, she was struck by the expression on
+her face, as if she had seen it on the face of a stranger. For a moment
+she looked at herself as at a stranger, seeing her beauty with a curious
+detachment, and admiring it without personal vanity or egoism, or any
+small, triumphant feeling. Yet it was not her beauty which fascinated
+her eyes, but an imaginative look in them and in the whole face. For
+the first time she fully realised why she had a curious, an evocative,
+influence on certain people, why she called the hidden children of the
+secret places of their souls, why those children heard, and stretched
+out their hands, and lifted their eyes and opened their lips.
+
+There was a summoning, and yet a distant expression in her eyes. She
+saw it herself. They were like eyes that had looked on magic, that would
+look on magic again.
+
+A maid came to help her. In a moment she had picked up her bouquet of
+roses and her music-case, and was back in the green drawing-room.
+
+There were more people in it now. Fritz was still hovering about looking
+remarkably out of place and strangely ill at ease. To-day his usual
+imperturbable self-confidence had certainly deserted him. He spoke
+to people but his eyes were on the door. Lady Holme knew that he
+was waiting for Miss Schley. She felt a sort of vague pity for his
+uneasiness. It was time for the concert to begin, but the Princesses
+had not yet arrived. A murmur of many voices came from the hidden room
+beyond the screen where the audience was assembled. Several of the
+performers began to look rather strung up. They smiled and talked with
+slightly more vivacity than was quite natural in them. One or two of the
+singers glanced over their songs, and pointed out certain effects they
+meant to make to the principal accompanist, an abnormally thin boy
+with thick dark hair and flushed cheeks. He expressed comprehension,
+emphasising it by finger-taps on the music and a continual, "I see!
+I see!" Two or three of the members of the committee looked at their
+watches, and the murmur of conversation in the hidden concert-room rose
+into a dull roar.
+
+Lady Holme sat down on a sofa. Sometimes when she was going to sing she
+felt nervous. There are very few really accomplished artists who do
+not. But to-day she was not at all nervous. She knew she was going to do
+well--as well as when she sang to Lady Cardington, even better. She felt
+almost as if she were made of music, as if music were part of her, ran
+in her veins like blood, shone in her eyes like light, beat in her heart
+like the pulse of life. But she felt also as if she were still at a
+window, looking down a road, and listening to the sound of an approach.
+
+"Did you see him?"
+
+A lady near her was speaking to a friend.
+
+"Yes. Doesn't he look shocking? Such an alteration!"
+
+"Poor fellow! I wonder he cares to go about."
+
+"And he's so clever. He helped me in a concert once--the Gordon boys,
+you know--and I assure you--"
+
+She did not catch anything more, but she felt a conviction that they
+were speaking of Rupert Carey, and that he must be in the concert-room.
+Poor Carey! She thought of the Arkell House ball, but only for a moment.
+Then someone spoke to her. A moment later Miss Schley came slowly
+into the room, accompanied by a very small, wiry-looking old woman,
+dreadfully dressed, and by Leo Ulford, who was carrying a bouquet of red
+carnations. The kind care of Mr. Ongrin had provided a bouquet for each
+lady who was performing.
+
+As Leo came in he looked round swiftly, furtively. He saw Fritz, and
+a flush went over his face. Then Lady Holme saw him look at her with a
+scowl, exactly like the scowl of an evil-tempered schoolboy. She bowed
+to him slightly. He ignored the recognition, and spoke to Miss Schley
+with a heavy assumption of ignominious devotion and intimacy. Lady Holme
+could scarcely help smiling. She read the little story very plainly--the
+little common story of Leo's desire to take a revenge for his thrashing
+fitting in with some similar desire of Miss Schley's; on her part
+probably a wish to punish Fritz for having ventured to say something
+about her impudent mimicry of his wife. Easy to read it was,
+common-minded, common-hearted humanity in full sail to petty triumph,
+petty revenge. But all this was taking place in the room behind Lady
+Holme, and she was leaning from the window watching the white road. But
+Fritz? She glanced round the drawing-room and saw that he was moved by
+the story as they had meant him to be moved. The angry jealousy of the
+primitive, sensual man was aflame, His possessive sense, one of the
+strongest, if not the strongest, of such a man's senses, was outraged.
+And he showed it.
+
+He was standing with a middle-aged lady, one of the committee, but he
+had ceased from talking to her, and was staring at Miss Schley and Leo
+with the peculiar inflated look on his face that was characteristic of
+him when his passions were fully roused. Every feature seemed to swell
+and become bloated, as if under the influence of a disease or physical
+seizure. The middle-aged lady looked at him with obvious astonishment,
+then turned away and spoke to the French actor.
+
+Miss Schley moved slowly into the middle of the room. She did not seem
+to see Fritz. Two or three people came to speak to her. She smiled but
+did not say much. The little wiry-looking old lady, her mother from
+Susanville, stood by her in an effaced manner, and Leo, holding the
+bouquet, remained close beside her, standing over her in his impudent
+fashion like a privileged guardian and lover.
+
+Lady Holme was watching Fritz. The necessary suppression of his anger
+at such a moment, and in such surroundings, suppression of any
+demonstration of it at least, was evidently torturing him. Someone--a
+man--spoke to him. His wife saw that he seemed to choke something down
+before he could get out a word in reply. Directly he had answered he
+moved away from the man towards Miss Schley, but he did not go up to
+her. He did not trust himself to do that. He stood still again, staring.
+Leo bent protectively over the American. She smiled at him demurely
+beneath lowered eyelids. The little old lady shook out her rusty black
+dress and assumed an absurd air of social sprightliness, making a mouth
+bunched up like an old-fashioned purse sharply drawn together by a
+string.
+
+There was a sudden lull in the roar of conversation from the
+concert-room, succeeded by a wide rustling noise. The Princesses had
+at length arrived, and the audience was standing up as they came in and
+took their seats. After a brief silence the rustling noise was renewed
+as the audience sat down again. Then the pianist hurried up to a
+grave-looking girl who was tenderly holding a violin, took her hand and
+led her away behind the screen. A moment later the opening bars of a
+duet were audible.
+
+The people in the artists' room began to sit down with a slight air of
+resignation. The French actor looked at the very pointed toes of his
+varnished boots and composed his india-rubber features into a solemn,
+almost priestly, expression. Lady Holme went over to a sofa near the
+screen and listened attentively to the duet, but from time to time
+she glanced towards the middle of the room where Miss Schley was
+still calmly standing up with Leo holding the bouquet. The mother from
+Susanville had subsided on a small chair with gilt legs, spread out
+her meagre gown, and assumed the aspect of a roosting bird at twilight.
+Fritz stood up with his back against the wall, staring at Miss Schley.
+His face still looked bloated. Presently Miss Schley glanced at him,
+as if by accident, looked surprised at seeing him there, and nodded
+demurely. He made a movement forward from the wall, but she immediately
+began to whisper to Leo Ulford, and after remaining for a moment in an
+attitude of angry hesitation he moved backward again. His face flushed
+scarlet.
+
+Lady Holme realised that he was making a fool of himself. She saw
+several pairs of eyes turned towards him, slight smiles appearing
+on several faces. The French actor had begun to watch him with an
+expression of close criticism, as a stage manager watches an actor at
+rehearsal. But she did not feel as if she cared what Fritz was doing.
+The sound of the violin had emphasised her odd sensation of having
+nothing to do with what was going on in the room. Just for one hour
+Fritz's conduct could not affect her.
+
+Very soon people began to whisper round her. Artists find it very
+difficult to listen to other artists on these occasions. In a minute or
+two almost everybody was speaking with an air of mystery. Miss Schley
+put her lips to Leo Ulford's ear. Evidently she had a great deal to say
+to him. He began to pout his lips in smiles. They both looked across at
+Lord Holme. Then Miss Schley went on murmuring words into Leo's ear and
+Leo began to shake with silent laughter. Lord Holme clenched his hands
+at his sides. The French actor, still watching him closely, put up a
+fat forefinger and meditatively traced the outline of his own profile,
+pushing out his large flexible lips when the finger was drawing near to
+them. The whole room was full of the tickling noise of half-whispered
+conversation.
+
+Presently the music stopped. Instantly the tickling noise stopped too.
+There was languid applause--the applause of smart people on a summer
+afternoon--from beyond the screen. Then the grave girl reappeared,
+looking graver and hot. Those who had been busily talking while she
+was playing gathered round her to express their delight in her kind
+accompaniment. The pianist hurried up to a stout man with a low,
+turned-down collar and a white satin tie, whose double chin, and general
+air of rather fatuous prosperity, proclaimed him the possessor of a
+tenor voice, and Miss Schley walked quietly, but with determination, up
+to where Lady Holme was sitting and took a seat beside her.
+
+"Glad to meet you again," she drawled.
+
+She called Leo Ulford with a sharp nod. He hesitated, and began to look
+supremely uncomfortable, twisting the bouquet of carnations round and
+round in nervous hands.
+
+"I've been simply expiring all season to hear you sing," Miss Schley
+continued.
+
+"How sweet of you!"
+
+"That is so. Mr. Ulford, please bring my flowers."
+
+Leo had no alternative but to obey. He came slowly towards the sofa,
+while the tenor and the pianist vanished behind the screen. That he
+was sufficiently sensitive to be conscious of the awkwardness of the
+situation Miss Schley had pleasantly contrived was very apparent.
+He glowered upon Lady Holme, forcing his boyish face to assume a
+coarsely-determined and indifferent expression. But somehow the body,
+which she knew her husband had thrashed, looked all the time as if it
+were being thrashed again.
+
+The voice of the hidden tenor rose in "_Celeste Aida!_" and Lady Holme
+listened with an air of definite attention, taking no notice of Leo. The
+music gave her a perfect excuse for ignoring him. But Miss Schley did
+not intend to be interfered with by anything so easily trampled upon as
+an art. Speaking in her most clear and choir-boyish tones, she said to
+Leo Ulford:
+
+"Sit down, Mr. Ulford. You fidget me standing."
+
+Then turning again to Lady Holme she continued:
+
+"Mr. Ulford's been so lovely and kind. He came up all the way from
+Hertfordshire just to take care of marmar and me to-day. Marmar's fair
+and crazy about him. She says he's the most lovely feller in Europe."
+
+Leo twisted the bouquet. He was sitting now on the edge of a chair, and
+shooting furtive glances in the direction of Lord Holme, who had begun
+to look extremely stupid, overwhelmed by the cool impudence of the
+American.
+
+"Your husband looks as if he were perched around on a keg of
+rattlesnakes," continued Miss Schley, her clear voice mingling with the
+passionate tenor cry, "_Celeste Aida!_" "Ain't he feeling well to-day?"
+
+"I believe he is perfectly well," said Lady Holme, in a very low voice.
+
+It was odd, perhaps, but she did not feel at all angry, embarrassed,
+or even slightly annoyed, by Miss Schley's very deliberate attempt to
+distress her. Of course she understood perfectly what had happened and
+was happening. Fritz had spoken to the actress about her mimicry of
+his wife, had probably spoken blunderingly, angrily. Miss Schley was
+secretly furious at his having found out what she had been doing, still
+more furious at his having dared to criticise any proceeding of hers. To
+revenge herself at one stroke on both Lord and Lady Holme she had turned
+to Leo Ulford, whose destiny it evidently was to be used as a weapon
+against others. Long ago Lady Holme had distracted Leo's wandering
+glances from the American and fixed them on herself. With the instinct
+to be common of an utterly common nature Miss Schley had resolved to
+awake a double jealousy--of husband and wife--by exhibiting Leo Ulford
+as her _ami intime_, perhaps as the latest victim to her fascination. It
+was the vulgar action of a vulgar woman, but it failed of its effect
+in one direction. Lord Holme was stirred, but Lady Holme was utterly
+indifferent. Miss Schley's quick instinct told her so and she was
+puzzled. She did not understand Lady Holme. That was scarcely strange,
+for to-day Lady Holme did not understand herself. The curious mental
+detachment of which she had been conscious for some time had increased
+until it began surely to link itself with something physical, something
+sympathetic in the body that replied to it. She asked herself whether
+the angel were spreading her wings at last. All the small, sordid
+details of which lives lived in society, lives such as hers, are full,
+details which assume often an extraordinary importance, a significance
+like that of molecules seen through a magnifying glass, had suddenly
+become to her as nothing. A profound indifference had softly invaded her
+towards the petty side of life. Miss Schley, Leo Ulford, even Fritz in
+his suppressed rage and jealousy of a male animal openly trampled upon,
+had nothing to do with her, could have no effect on her at this moment.
+She remembered that she had once sighed for release. Well, it seemed to
+her as if release were at hand.
+
+The tenor finished his romance. Again the muffled applause sounded. As
+the singer came from behind the screen, wiping beads of perspiration
+from his self-satisfied face, Lady Holme got up and congratulated him.
+Then she crossed over to her husband.
+
+"Why don't you go into the concert-room, Fritz? You're missing
+everything, and you're only in the way here."
+
+She did not speak unkindly. He said nothing, only cleared his throat.
+
+"Go in," she said. "I should like to have you there while I am singing."
+
+He cleared his throat again.
+
+"Right you are."
+
+He stared into her eyes with a sort of savage admiration.
+
+"Cut her out," he said. "Cut her out! You can, and--damn her!--she
+deserves it."
+
+Then he turned and went out.
+
+Lady Holme felt rather sick for a moment. She knew she was going to sing
+well, she wished to sing well--but not in order to punish Miss Schley
+for having punished Fritz. Was everything she did to accomplish some
+sordid result? Was even her singing--the one thing in which Robin Pierce
+and some other divined a hidden truth that was beautiful--was even that
+to play its contemptible part in the social drama in which she was so
+inextricably entangled? Those gossamer threads were iron strands indeed.
+
+Someone else was singing--her friend with the contralto voice.
+
+She sat down alone in a corner. Presently the French actor began to
+give one of his famous monologues. She heard his wonderfully varied
+elocution, his voice--intelligence made audible and dashed with flying
+lights of humour rising and falling subtly, yet always with a curious
+sound of inevitable simplicity. She heard gentle titterings from the
+concealed audience, then a definite laugh, then a peal of laughter quite
+gloriously indiscreet. The people were waking up. And she felt as if
+they were being prepared for her. But why had Fritz looked like that,
+spoken like that? It seemed to spoil everything. To-day she felt too far
+away from--too far beyond, that was the truth--Miss Schley to want to
+enter into any rivalry with her. She wished very much that she had been
+placed first on the programme. Then there could have been no question of
+her cutting out the American.
+
+As she was thinking this Miss Schley slowly crossed the room and came up
+to her.
+
+"Lady Holme," she said, "I come next."
+
+"Do you?"
+
+"I do. And then you follow after."
+
+"Well?"
+
+"Say, would you mind changing it? It don't do to have two recitations
+one after the other. There ought to be something different in between."
+
+Lady Holme looked at her quite eagerly, almost with gratitude.
+
+"I'll sing next," she said quickly.
+
+"Much obliged to you, I'm sure. You're perfectly sweet."
+
+Lady Holme saw again a faint look of surprise on the American's white
+face, succeeded instantly by an expression of satisfaction. She realised
+that Miss Schley had some hidden disagreeable reason for her request.
+She even guessed what it was. But she only felt glad that, whatever
+happened, no one could accuse her of trying to efface any effect made by
+Miss Schley upon the audience. As she sang before the "imitations,"
+if any effect were to be effaced it must be her own. The voice of the
+French actor ceased, almost drowned in a ripple of laughter, a burst
+of quite warm applause. He reappeared looking calm and magisterial. The
+applause continued, and he had to go back and bow his thanks. The tenor,
+who had not been recalled, looked cross and made a movement of his
+double chin that suggested bridling.
+
+"Now, Miss Schley!" said the pianist. "You come now!"
+
+"Lady Holme has very kindly consented to go first," she replied.
+
+Then she turned to the French actor and, in atrocious but very
+self-possessed French, began to congratulate him on his performance.
+
+"Oh, well--" the pianist hurried up to Lady Holme. "You have
+really--very well then--these are the songs! Which do you sing first?
+Very hot, isn't it?"
+
+He wiped his long fingers with a silk pocket-handkerchief and took the
+music she offered to him.
+
+"The Princesses seem very pleased," he added. "Marteau--charming
+composer, yes--very pleased indeed. Which one? '_C'est toi_'? Certainly,
+certainly."
+
+He wiped his hands again and held out one to lead Lady Holme to the
+platform. But she ignored it gently and went on alone. He followed,
+carrying the music and perspiring. As they disappeared Miss Schley got
+up and moved to a chair close by the screen that hid the platform. She
+beckoned to Leo Ulford and he followed her.
+
+As Lady Holme stepped on to the low platform, edged with a bank of
+flowers, it seemed to her as if with one glance she saw everyone in the
+crowded room, and felt at least something swiftly of each one's feeling.
+
+The two Princesses sat together looking kind and serious. As she
+curtseyed to them they bowed to her and smiled. Behind them she saw a
+compact mass of acquaintances: Lady Cardington sitting with Sir Donald
+and looking terribly sad, even self-conscious, yet eager; Mrs. Wolfstein
+with Mr. Laycock; Mr. Bry, his eyeglass fixed, a white carnation in his
+coat; Lady Manby laughing with a fat old man who wore a fez, and many
+others. At the back she saw Fritz, standing up and staring at her with
+eyes that seemed almost to cry, "Cut her out!" And in the fourth row she
+saw a dreary, even a horrible, sight--Rupert Carey's face, disfigured
+by the vice which was surely destroying him, red, bloated, dreadfully
+coarsened, spotted. From the midst of the wreckage of the flesh his
+strange eyes looked out with a vivid expression of hopelessness. Yet in
+them burned fires, and in fire there is an essence of fierce purity. The
+soul in those eyes seemed longing to burn up the corruption of his body,
+longing to destroy the ruined temple, longing to speak and say, "I am in
+prison, but do not judge of the prisoner by examining the filthiness of
+his cell."
+
+As Lady Holme took in the audience with a glance there was a rustle
+of paper. Almost everyone was looking to see if the programme had been
+altered. Lady Holme saw that suddenly Fritz had realised the change that
+had been made, and what it meant. An expression of anger came into his
+face.
+
+She felt that she saw more swiftly, and saw into more profoundly to-day
+than ever before in her life; that she had a strangely clear vision of
+minds as well as of faces, that she was vivid, penetrating. And she
+had time, before she began to sing, for an odd thought of the person
+drowning who flashes back over the ways of his past, who is, as it were,
+allowed one instant of exceptional life before he is handed over to
+death. This thought was clear, clean cut in her mind for a moment, and
+she put herself in the sounding arms of the sea.
+
+Then the pianist began his prelude, and she moved a step forward to the
+flowers and opened her lips to sing.
+
+She sang by heart the little story drawn from the writing of Jalalu'd
+dinu'r Rumi. The poet who had taken it had made a charming poem of it,
+delicate, fragile, and yet dramatic and touched with fervour, porcelain
+with firelight gleaming on it here and there. Lady Holme had usually a
+power of identifying herself thoroughly with what she was singing, of
+concentrating herself with ease upon it, and so compelling her hearers
+to be concentrated upon her subject and upon her. To-day she was deeper
+down in words and music, in the little drama of them, than ever before.
+She was the man who knocked at the door, the loved one who cried from
+within the house. She gave the reply, "_C'est moi_!" with the eagerness
+of that most eager of all things--Hope. Then, as she sang gravely, with
+tender rebuke, "This house cannot shelter us both together," she was
+in the heart of love, that place of understanding. Afterwards, as one
+carried by Fate through the sky, she was the man set down in a desert
+place, fasting, praying, educating himself to be more worthy of love.
+Then came the return, the question, "_Qui est la_?" the reply;--reply
+of the solitary place, the denied desire, the longing to mount, the
+educated heart--"_C'est toi_!" the swiftly-opening door, the rush of
+feet that were welcome, of outstretched arms for which waited a great
+possession.
+
+Something within her lived the song very fully and completely. For once
+she did not think at all of what effect she was making. She was not
+unconscious of the audience. She was acutely conscious of the presence
+of people, and of individuals whom she knew; of Fritz, of Lady
+Cardington, Sir Donald, even of poor, horrible Rupert Carey. But with
+the unusual consciousness was linked a strange indifference, a sense
+of complete detachment. And this enabled her to live simultaneously two
+lives--Lady Holme's and another's. Who was the other? She did not ask,
+but she felt as if in that moment a prisoner within her was released.
+And yet, directly the song was over and the eager applause broke out, a
+bitterness came into her heart. Her sense, banished for the moment,
+of her own personality and circumstances returned upon her, and that
+"_C'est toi_!" of the educated heart seemed suddenly an irony as she
+looked at Fritz's face. Had any lover gone into the desert for her,
+fasted and prayed for her, learned for her sake the right answer to the
+ceaseless question that echoes in every woman's heart?
+
+The pianist modulated, struck the chord of a new key, paused, then broke
+into a languid, honey-sweet prelude. Lady Holme sang the Italian song
+which had made Lady Cardington cry.
+
+Afterwards, she often thought of her singing of that particular song on
+that particular occasion as people think of the frail bridges that span
+the gulfs between one fate and another. And it seemed to her that
+while she was crossing this bridge, that was a song, she had a faint
+premonition of the land that lay before her on the far side of the gulf.
+She did not see clearly any features of the landscape, but surely she
+saw that it was different from all that she had known. Perhaps she
+deceived herself. Perhaps she fancied that she had divined something
+that was in reality hidden from her. One thing, however, is
+certain--that she made a very exceptional effect upon her audience. Many
+of them, when later they heard of an incident that occurred within a
+very short time, felt almost awestricken for a moment. It seemed to them
+that they had been visited by one of the messengers--the forerunners of
+destiny--that they had heard a whispering voice say, "Listen well! This
+is the voice of the Future singing."
+
+Many people in London on the following day said, "We felt in her singing
+that something extraordinary must be going to happen to her." And some
+of them at any rate, probably spoke the exact truth.
+
+Lady Holme herself, while she sang her second song, really felt this
+sensation--that it was her swan song. If once we touch perfection we
+feel the black everlasting curtain being drawn round us. We have
+done what we were meant to do and can do no more. Let the race of men
+continue. Our course is run out. To strive beyond the goal is to offer
+oneself up to the derision of the gods. In her song, Lady Holme felt
+that suddenly, and with great ease, she touched the perfection that it
+was possible for her to reach. She felt that, and she saw what she had
+done--in the eyes of Lady Cardington that wept, in Sir Donald's eyes,
+which had become young as the eyes of Spring, and in the eyes of that
+poor prisoner who was the real Rupert Carey. When she sang the first
+refrain she knew.
+
+
+  "Torna in fior di giovinezza
+       Isaotta Blanzesmano,
+       Dice: Tutto al mondo e vano:
+   Nell'amore ogni dolcezza."
+
+
+She understood while she sang--she had never understood before, nor
+could conceive why she understood now--what love had been to the world,
+was being, would be so long as there was a world. The sweetness of love
+did not merely present itself to her imagination, but penetrated her
+soul. And that penetration, while it carried with it and infused through
+her whole being a delicate radiance, that was as the radiance of
+light in the midst of surrounding blackness--beams of the moon in
+a forest--carried with it also into her heart a frightful sense of
+individual isolation, of having missed the figure of Truth in the
+jostling crowd of shams.
+
+Fritz stood there against the wall. Yes--Fritz. And he was savagely
+rejoicing in the effect she was making upon the audience, because he
+thought, hoped, that it would lessen the triumph of the woman who was
+punishing him.
+
+She had missed the figure of Truth. That was very certain. And as she
+sang the refrain for the last time she seemed to herself to be searching
+for the form that must surely be very wonderful, searching for it in the
+many eyes that were fixed upon her. She looked at Sir Donald:
+
+
+  "Dice: Tutto al mondo e vano:"
+
+
+She looked at Rupert Carey:
+
+
+  "Nell'amore ogni dolcezza."
+
+
+She still looked at Carey, and the hideous wreckage of the flesh was no
+longer visible to her. She saw only his burning eyes.
+
+Directly she had finished singing she asked for her motor cloak. While
+they were fetching it she had to go back twice to the platform to bow to
+the applause.
+
+Miss Schley, who was looking angry, said to her:
+
+"You're not going away before my show?"
+
+"I want to go to the concert room, where I can hear better, and see,"
+she replied.
+
+Miss Schley looked at her doubtfully, but had to go to the platform. As
+she slowly disappeared behind the screen Lady Holme drew the cloak round
+her, pulled down her veil and went quickly away.
+
+She wanted--more, she required--to be alone.
+
+At the hall door she sent a footman to find the motor car. When it came
+up she said to the chauffeur:
+
+"Take me home quickly and then come back for his lordship."
+
+She got in.
+
+As the car went off swiftly she noticed that the streets were shining
+with wet.
+
+"Has it been raining?" she asked.
+
+"Raining hard, my lady."
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVI
+
+ON the following morning the newspapers contained an account of the
+concert at Manchester House. They contained also an account of a motor
+accident which had occurred the same afternoon between Hyde Park Corner
+and Knightsbridge.
+
+On the wet pavement Lord Holme's new car, which was taking Lady Holme
+to Cadogan Square at a rapid pace, skidded and overturned, pinning Lady
+Holme beneath it. While she was on the ground a hansom cab ran into the
+car.
+
+At their breakfasts her friends, her acquaintances, her enemies and the
+general public read of her beautiful singing at the concert, and read
+also the following paragraph, which closed the description of the
+accident:
+
+
+  "We deeply regret to learn that Lady Holme was severely injured in
+  the face by the accident. Full particulars have not reached us, but
+  we understand that an immediate operation is necessary and will be
+  performed to-day by Mr. Bernard Crispin the famous surgeon. Her
+  ladyship is suffering great pain, and it is feared that she will be
+  permanently disfigured."
+
+
+The fierce change which Lady Holme had longed for was a reality. One
+life, the life of the siren, had come to an end. But the eyes of the
+woman must still see light. The heart of the woman must still beat on.
+
+Death stretched out a hand in the darkness and found the hand of Birth.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVII
+
+ON a warm but overcast day, at the end of the following September, a
+woman, whose face was completely hidden by a thick black veil, drove
+up to the boat landing of the town of Como in a hired victoria. She was
+alone, but behind her followed a second carriage containing an Italian
+maid and a large quantity of luggage. When the victoria stopped at
+the water's edge the woman got out slowly, and stood for a moment,
+apparently looking for something. There were many boats ranged along the
+quay, their white awnings thrown back, their oars resting on the painted
+seats. Beside one, which was larger than the others, soberly decorated
+in brown with touches of gold, and furnished with broad seats not unlike
+small armchairs, stood two bold-looking Italian lads dressed in white
+sailors' suits. One of them, after staring for a brief instant at the
+veiled woman, went up to her and said in Italian:
+
+"Is the signora for Casa Felice?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+The boy took off his round hat with a gallant gesture.
+
+"The boat is here, signora."
+
+He led the way to the brown-and-gold craft, and helped the lady to get
+into it. She sat down on one of the big seats.
+
+"That is the luggage," she said, speaking Italian in a low voice, and
+pointing to the second carriage from which the maid was stepping. The
+two boatmen hastened towards it. In a few minutes maid and luggage were
+installed in a big black gondola, oared by two men standing up, and the
+brown boat, with the two lads in white and the veiled woman, glided out
+on the calm water.
+
+The day was a grey dream, mystical in its colourless silence. Blue Italy
+was shrouded as the woman's face was shrouded. The speechlessness of
+Nature environed her speechlessness. She was an enigma set in an enigma,
+and the two rowers looked at her and at the sunless sky, and bent to
+their oars gravely. A melancholy stole into their sensitive dark
+faces. This new _padrona_ had already cast a shadow upon their buoyant
+temperaments.
+
+She noticed it and clasped her hands together in her lap. She was not
+accustomed yet to her new _role_ in life.
+
+The boat stole on. Como was left behind. The thickly-wooded shores of
+the lake, dotted with many villas, the tall green mountains covered with
+chestnut trees, framed the long, winding riband of water which was the
+way to Casa Felice. There were not many other boats out. The steamer
+had already started for Bellagio, and was far away near the point
+where Torno nestles around its sheltered harbour. The black gondola was
+quickly left behind. Its load of luggage weighed it down. The brown boat
+was alone in the grey dream of the sunless autumn day.
+
+Behind her veil Lady Holme was watching the two Italian boys, whose
+lithe bodies bent to their oars, whose dark eyes were often turned
+upon her with a staring scrutiny, with the morose and almost violent
+expression that is the child of frustrated curiosity.
+
+Was it true? Was she in real life, or sitting there, watching, thinking,
+striving to endure, in a dream? Since the accident which had for ever
+changed her life she had felt many sensations, a torrent of sensations,
+but never one exactly like this, never one so full of emptiness, chaos,
+grey vacancy, eternal stillness, unreal oppression and almost magical
+solitude as this. She had thought she had suffered all things that she
+could suffer. She had not yet suffered this. Someone, the Governing
+Power, had held this in reserve. Now it was being sent forth by decree.
+Now it was coming upon her. Now it was enveloping her. Now it was
+rolling round her and billowing away on every side to unimaginably
+remote horizons.
+
+Another and a new emotion of horror was to be hers. Would the attack of
+the hidden one upon her never end? Was that quiver of poisoned arrows
+inexhaustible?
+
+She leaned back against the cushions without feeling them. She wanted to
+sink back as the mortally wounded sink, to sink down, far down, into the
+gulf where surely the dying go to find, with their freezing lips, the
+frozen lips of Death. She shut her eyes.
+
+Presently, with the faint splash of the oars in the water, there mingled
+a low sound of music. The rower nearest to her was singing in an
+under voice to keep his boy's heart from succumbing to the spell of
+melancholy. She listened, still wrapped in this dreadful chaos that
+was dreamlike. At first the music was a murmur. But presently it
+grew louder. She could distinguish words now and then. Once she heard
+_carissima_, a moment afterwards _amore_. Then the poison in which the
+tip of this last arrow had been curiously steeped began its work in
+her. The quivering creature hidden within her cowered, shrank, put up
+trembling hands, cried out, "I cannot endure this thing. I do not know
+how to. I have never learnt the way. This is impossible for me. This is
+a demand I have not the capacity to fulfil!" And, even while it cowered
+and cried out, knew, "This I must endure. This demand I shall be made
+to fulfil. Nothing will serve me; no outstretched hands, no wailings of
+despair, no prayers, no curses even will save me. For I am the soul in
+the hands of the vivisector."
+
+Along the lake, past the old home of La Taglioni, past the Villa Pasta
+with its long garden, past little Torno with its great round oleanders
+and its houses crowding to the shore, the boatman sang. Gathering
+courage as his own voice dispersed his melancholy, and the warm hopes of
+his youth spread their wings once more, roused by the words of love his
+lips were uttering, he fearlessly sent out his song. Love in the South
+was in it, love in the sun, embraces in warm scented nights, longings
+in moonlight, attainment in darkness. The boy had forgotten the veiled
+lady, whose shrouded face and whose silence had for a moment saddened
+him. His hot, bold nature reasserted itself, the fire of his youth
+blazed up again. He sang as if only the other boatman had been there and
+they had seen the girls they loved among the trees upon the shore.
+
+And the soul writhed, like an animal stretched and strapped upon the
+board, to whom no anaesthetic, had been given.
+
+Never before would it have been possible to Lady Holme to believe that
+the mere sound of a word could inflict such torment upon a heart as the
+sound of the word _amore_, coming from the boatman's lips, now inflicted
+upon hers. Each time it came, with its soft beauty, its languor of
+sweetness--like a word reclining--it flayed her soul alive, and showed
+her red, raw bareness.
+
+Yet she did not ask the man to stop singing. Few people in the hands
+of Fate ask Fate for favours. Instinct speaks in the soul and says, "Be
+silent."
+
+The boat rounded the point of Torno and came at once into a lonelier
+region of the lake. Autumn was more definite here. Its sadness spoke
+more plainly. Habitations on the shores were fewer. The mountains were
+more grim, though grander. And their greyness surely closed in a little
+upon the boat, the rowers, the veiled woman who was being taken to Casa
+Felice.
+
+Perhaps to combat the gathering gloom of Nature the boatman sang more
+loudly, with the full force of his voice. But suddenly he seemed to be
+struck by the singular contrast opposed to his expansive energy by the
+silent figure opposite to him. A conscious look came into his face. His
+voice died away abruptly. After a pause he said,
+
+"Perhaps the signora is not fond of music?"
+
+Lady Holme wanted to speak, but she could not. She and this bright-eyed
+boy were not in the same world. That was what she felt. He did not know
+it, but she knew it. And one world cannot speak through infinite space
+with another.
+
+She said nothing. The boy looked over his shoulder at his companion.
+Then, in silence, they both rowed on.
+
+And now that the song had ceased she was again in the grey chaos of the
+dream, in the irrevocable emptiness, the intense, the enormous solitude
+that was like the solitude of an unpeopled eternity in which man had no
+lot.
+
+Presently, with a stroke of his right oar, the boy who had sung turned
+the boat's prow toward the shore, and Lady Holme saw a large, lonely
+house confronting them on the nearer bank of the lake. It stood apart.
+For a long distance on either side of it there was no other habitation.
+The flat, yellow facade rose out of the water. Behind was a dim tangle
+of densely-growing trees rising up on the steep mountain side towards
+the grey sky. Lady Holme could not yet see details. The boat was still
+too far out upon the lake. Nor would she have been able to note details
+if she had seen them. Only a sort of heavy impression that this house
+had a pale, haunted aspect forced itself dully upon her.
+
+"Ecco Casa Felice, signora!" said the foremost rower, half timidly,
+pointing with his brown hand.
+
+She made an intense effort and uttered some reply. The boy was
+encouraged and began to tell her about the beauties of the house, the
+gardens, the chasm behind the piazza down which the waterfall rushed, to
+dive beneath the house and lose itself in the lake. She tried to listen,
+but she could not. The strangeness of her being alone, hidden behind
+a dense veil, of her coming to such a retired house in the autumn to
+remain there in utter solitude, with no object except that of being
+safe from the intrusion of anyone who knew her, of being hidden from
+all watching eyes that had ever looked upon her--the strangeness of it
+obsessed her, was both powerful and unreal. That she should be one of
+those lonely women of whom the world speaks with a lightly-contemptuous
+pity seemed incredible to her. Yet what woman was lonelier than she?
+
+The boat drew in toward the shore and she began to see the house more
+plainly. It was large, and the flat facade was broken in the middle
+by an open piazza with round arches and slender columns. This piazza
+divided the house in two. The villa was in fact composed of two square
+buildings connected together by it. From the boat, looking up, Lady
+Holme saw a fierce mountain gorge rising abruptly behind the house.
+Huge cypresses grew on its sides, towering above the slate roof, and she
+heard the loud noise of falling water. It seemed to add to the weight of
+her desolation.
+
+The boat stopped at a flight of worn stone steps. One of the boys sprang
+out and rang a bell, and presently an Italian man-servant opened a tall
+iron gate set in a crumbling stone arch, and showed more stone steps
+leading upward between walls covered with dripping lichen. The boat boy
+came to help Lady Holme out.
+
+For a moment she did not move. The dreamlike feeling had come upon her
+with such force that her limbs refused to obey her will. The sound of
+the falling water in the mountain gorge had sent her farther adrift into
+the grey, unpeopled eternity, into the vague chaos. But the boy held
+out his hand, took hers. The strong clasp recalled her. She got up. The
+Italian man-servant preceded her up the steps into a long garden built
+up high above the lake on a creeper-covered wall. To the left was the
+house door. She stood still for an instant looking out over the wide
+expanse of unruffled grey water. Then, putting her hand up to her veil
+as if to keep it more closely over her face, she slowly went into the
+house.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVIII
+
+DESPAIR had driven Lady Holme to Casa Felice. When she had found that
+the accident had disfigured her frightfully, and that the disfigurement
+would be permanent, she had at first thought of killing herself. But
+then she had been afraid. Life had abruptly become a horror to her. She
+felt that it must be a horror to her always. Yet she dared not leave
+it then, in her home in London, in the midst of the sights and sounds
+connected with her former happiness. After the operation, and the
+verdict of the doctors, that no more could be done than had been done,
+she had had an access of almost crazy misery, in which all the secret
+violence of her nature had rushed to the surface from the depths. Shut
+up alone in her room, she had passed a day and a night without food. She
+had lain upon the floor. She had torn her clothes into fragments. The
+animal that surely dwells at the door of the soul of each human being
+had had its way in her, had ravaged her, humiliated her, turned her to
+savagery. Then at last she had slept, still lying upon the floor. And
+she had waked feeling worn out but calm, desperately calm. She defied
+the doctors. What did they know of women, of what women can do to
+regain a vanished beauty? She would call in specialists, beauty doctors,
+quacks, the people who fill the papers with their advertisements.
+
+Then began a strange defile of rag-tag humanity to the Cadogan Square
+door--women, men, of all nationalities and pretensions. But the evil was
+beyond their power. At last an American specialist, who had won renown
+by turning a famous woman of sixty into the semblance of a woman of
+six-and-thirty--for a short time--was called in. Lady Holme knew
+that his verdict must be final. If he could do nothing to restore her
+vanished loveliness nothing could be done. After being closeted with her
+for a long time he came out of her room. There were tears in his eyes.
+To the footman who opened the hall door, and who stared in surprise, he
+explained his emotion thus.
+
+"Poor lady," he said. "It's a hopeless case."
+
+"Ah!" said the man, who was the pale footman Lady Holme had sent with
+the latch-key to Leo Ulford.
+
+"Hopeless. It's a hard thing to have to tell a lady she'll always
+be--be--"
+
+"What, sir?" said the footman.
+
+"Well--what people won't enjoy looking at."
+
+He winked his eyes. He was a little bald man, with a hatchet face that
+did not suggest emotion.
+
+"And judging by part of the left side of the face, I guess she must have
+been almost a beauty once," he added, stepping into the square.
+
+That was Lady Holme now. She had to realise herself as a woman whom
+people would rather not look at.
+
+All this time she had not seen Fritz. He had asked to see her. He had
+even tried to insist on seeing her, but so long as there was any hope in
+her of recovering her lost beauty she had refused to let him come near
+her. The thought of his eyes staring upon the tragic change in her face
+sent cold creeping through her veins. But when the American had gone she
+realised that there was nothing to wait for, that if she were ever to
+let Fritz see her again it had better be now. The bandages in which
+her face had been swathed had been removed. She went to a mirror and,
+setting her teeth and clenching her hands, looked into it steadily.
+
+She did not recognise herself. As she stood there she felt as if a
+dreadful stranger had come into the room and was confronting her.
+
+The accident, and the surgical treatment that had followed upon it,
+had greatly altered the face. The nose, once fine and delicate, was
+now coarse and misshapen. A wound had permanently distorted the mouth,
+producing a strange, sneering expression. The whole of the right side of
+the face was puffy and heavy-looking, and drawn down towards the chin.
+It was also at present discoloured. For as Lady Holme lay under the car
+she had been badly burnt. The raw, red tinge would no doubt fade away
+with time, but the face must always remain unsightly, even a little
+grotesque, must always show to the casual passer-by a woman who had been
+the victim of a dreadful accident.
+
+Lady Holme stared at this woman for a long time. There were no tears in
+her eyes. Then she went to the dressing-table and began to make up her
+face. Slowly, deliberately, with a despairing carefulness, she covered
+it with pigments till she looked like a woman in Regent Street. Her face
+became a frightful mask, and even then the fact that she was disfigured
+was not concealed. The application of the pigments began to cause her
+pain. The right side of her face throbbed. She looked dreadfully old,
+too, with this mass of paint and powder upon her--like a hag, she
+thought. And it was obvious that she was trying to hide something.
+Anyone, man or woman, looking upon her, would divine that so much art
+could only be used for the concealment of a dreadful disability. People,
+seeing this mask, would suppose--what might they not suppose? The pain
+in her face became horrible. Suddenly, with a cry, she began to undo
+what she had done. When she had finished she rang the bell. Her maid
+knocked at the door. Without opening it she called out:
+
+"Is his lordship in the house?"
+
+"Yes, my lady. His lordship has just come in."
+
+"Go and ask him to come up and see me."
+
+"Yes, my lady."
+
+Lady Holme sat down on the sofa at the foot of the bed. She was
+trembling violently. She sat looking on the ground and trying to control
+her limbs. A sort of dreadful humbleness surged through her, as if she
+were a guilty creature about to cringe before a judge. She trembled till
+the sofa on which she was sitting shook. She caught hold of the cushions
+and made a strong effort to sit still. The handle of the door turned.
+
+"Don't come in!" she cried out sharply.
+
+But the door opened and her husband appeared on the threshold. As he did
+so she turned swiftly so that only part of the left side of her face was
+towards him.
+
+"Vi!" he said. "Poor old girl, I--"
+
+He was coming forward when she called out again "Stay there, Fritz!"
+
+He stopped.
+
+"Why?" he asked.
+
+"I--I--wait a minute. Shut the door."
+
+He shut the door. She was still looking away from him.
+
+"Do you understand?" she said, still in a sharp voice.
+
+"Understand what?"
+
+"That I'm altered, that the accident's altered me--very much?"
+
+"I know. The doctor said something. But you look all right."
+
+"From there."
+
+The trembling seized her again.
+
+"Well, but--it can't be so bad--"
+
+"It is. Don't move! Fritz--"
+
+"Well?"
+
+"You--do you care for me?"
+
+"Of course I do, old girl. Why, you know--"
+
+Suddenly she turned round, stood up and faced him desperately.
+
+"Do you care for me, Fritz?" she said.
+
+There was a dead silence. It seemed to last for a long while. At length
+it was broken by a woman's voice crying:
+
+"Fritz,--Fritz--it isn't my fault! It isn't my fault!"
+
+"Good God!" Lord Holme said slowly.
+
+"It isn't my fault, Fritz! It isn't my fault!"
+
+"Good God! but--the doctor didn't--Oh--wait a minute--"
+
+A door opened and shut. He was gone. Lady Holme fell down on the sofa.
+She was alone, but she kept on sobbing:
+
+"It isn't my fault, Fritz! It isn't my fault, Fritz!"
+
+And while she sobbed the words she knew that her life with Fritz Holme
+had come to an end. The chapter was closed.
+
+From that day she had only one desire--to hide herself. The season was
+over. London was empty. She could travel. She resolved to disappear.
+Fritz had stayed on in the house, but she would not see him again, and
+he did not press her to. She knew why. He dreaded to look at her. She
+would see no one. At first there had been streams of callers, but now
+almost everybody had left town. Only Sir Donald came to the door each
+day and inquired after her health. One afternoon a note was brought to
+her. It was from Fritz, saying that he had been "feeling a bit chippy,"
+and the doctor advised him to run over to Homburg. But he wished to know
+what she meant to do. Would she go down to her father?--her mother, Lady
+St. Loo, was dead, and her father was an old man--or what? Would she
+come to Homburg too?
+
+When she read those words she laughed out loud. Then she sent for the
+_New York Herald_ and looked for the Homburg notes. She found Miss
+Pimpernel Schley's name among the list of the newest arrivals. That
+evening she wrote to her husband:
+
+
+  "Do not bother about me. Go to Homburg. I need rest and I want to
+  be alone. Perhaps I may go to some quiet place in Switzerland with
+  my maid. I'll let you know if I leave town. Good-bye.
+
+                                              "VIOLA HOLME."
+
+
+At first she had put only Viola. Then she added the second word. Viola
+alone suggested an intimacy which no longer existed between her and the
+man she had married.
+
+The next day Lord Holme crossed the Channel. She was left with the
+servants.
+
+Till then she had not been out of the house, but two days afterwards,
+swathed in a thick veil, she went for a drive in the Park, and on
+returning from it found Sir Donald on the door-step. He looked frailer
+than ever and very old. Lady Holme would have preferred to avoid him.
+Since that interview with her husband the idea of meeting anyone she
+knew terrified her. But he came at once to help her out of the carriage.
+Her face was invisible, but he knew her, and he greeted her in a rather
+shaky voice. She could see that he was deeply moved, and thanked him for
+his many inquiries.
+
+"But why are you still in London?" she said.
+
+"You are still in London," he replied.
+
+She was about to say good-bye on the door-step; but he kept her hand in
+his and said:
+
+"Let me come in and speak to you for a moment."
+
+"Very well," she said.
+
+When they were in the drawing-room she still kept the veil over her
+face, and remained standing.
+
+"Sir Donald," she said, "you cared for me, I know; you were fond of me."
+
+"Were?" he answered.
+
+"Yes--were. I am no longer the woman you--other people--cared for."
+
+"If there is any change--" he began.
+
+"I know. You are going to say it is not in the woman, the real woman.
+But I say it is. The change is in what, to men, is the real woman. This
+change has destroyed any feeling my husband may have had for me."
+
+"It could never destroy mine," Sir Donald said quietly.
+
+"Yes, it could--yours especially, because you are a worshipper of
+beauty, and Fritz never worshipped anything except himself. I am going
+to let you say good-bye to me without seeing me. Remember me as I was."
+
+"But--what do you mean? You speak as if you would no longer go into the
+world."
+
+"I go into the world! You haven't seen me, Sir Donald."
+
+She saw an expression of nervous apprehension come into his face as he
+glanced at her veil.
+
+"What are you going to do, then?" he said.
+
+"I don't know. I--I want a hiding-place."
+
+She saw tears come into his old, faded eyes.
+
+"Hush!" he said. "Don't-"
+
+"A hiding-place. I want to travel a long way off and be quite alone, and
+think, and see how I can go on, if I can go on."
+
+Her voice was quite steady.
+
+"If I could do something--anything for you!" he murmured.
+
+"You fancy you are still speaking to the woman who sang, Sir Donald."
+
+"Would you--" Suddenly he spoke with some eagerness. "You want to go
+away, to be alone?"
+
+"Yes, I must."
+
+"Let me lend you Casa Felice!"
+
+"Casa Felice!"
+
+She laughed.
+
+"To be sure; I was to baptise it, wasn't I?"
+
+"Ah, that--will you have it for a while?"
+
+"But you are going there!"
+
+"I will not go. It is all ready. The servants are engaged. You will
+be perfectly looked after, perfectly comfortable. Let me feel I can do
+something for you. Try it. You will find beauty there--peace. And I--I
+shall be on the lake, not far off."
+
+"I must be alone," she said wearily.
+
+"You shall be. I will never come unless you send for me."
+
+"I should never send for you or for anyone."
+
+She did not say then what she would do, but three days later she
+accepted Sir Donald's offer.
+
+And now she was alone in Casa Felice. She had not even brought her
+French maid, but had engaged an Italian. She was resolved to isolate
+herself with people who had never seen her as a beautiful woman.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIX
+
+LADY HOLME never forgot that first evening at Casa Felice. The
+strangeness of it was greater than the strangeness of any nightmare.
+When she was shut up in her bedroom in London she had thought she
+realised all the meaning of the word loneliness. Now she knew that then
+she had not begun to realise it. For she had been in her own house, in
+the city which contained a troop of her friends, in the city where she
+had reigned. And although she knew that she would reign no more, she had
+not grasped the exact meaning of that knowledge in London. She had known
+a fact but not fully felt it. She had known what she now was but not
+fully felt what she now was. Even when Fritz, muttering almost terrified
+exclamations, had stumbled out of the bedroom, she had not heard the
+dull clamour of finality as she heard it now.
+
+She was an exile. She was an outcast among women. She was no longer
+a beautiful woman, she was not even a plain woman--she was a
+dreadful-looking human being.
+
+The Italian servants by whom she was surrounded suddenly educated her in
+the lore of exact knowledge of herself and her present situation.
+
+Italians are the most charming of the nations, but Italians of the lower
+classes are often very unreserved in the display of their most fugitive
+sensations, their most passing moods. The men, especially when they are
+young, are highly susceptible to beauty in women. They are also--and
+the second emotion springs naturally enough from the first--almost
+childishly averse from female ugliness. It is a common thing in Italy
+to hear of men of the lower classes speak of a woman's plainness with
+brutality, with a manner almost of personal offence. They often shrink
+from personal ugliness as Englishmen seldom do, like children shrinking
+from something abnormal--a frightening dwarf, a spectre.
+
+Now that Lady Holme had reached the "hiding-place" for which she had
+longed, she resolved to be brutal with herself. Till now she had almost
+perpetually concealed her disfigured face. Even her servants had not
+seen it. But in this lonely house, among these strangers, she knew that
+the inevitable moment was come when she must begin the new life, the
+terrible life that was henceforth to be hers. In her bedroom she took
+off her hat and veil, and without glancing into the glass she came
+downstairs. In the hall she met the butler. She saw him start.
+
+"Can I have tea?" she said, looking at him steadily.
+
+"Yes, signora," he answered, looking down.
+
+"In the piazza, please."
+
+She went out through the open door into the piazza. The boy who had sung
+in the boat was there, watering some geraniums in pots. As she came out
+he glanced up curiously, at the same time pulling off his hat. When he
+saw her his mouth gaped, and an expression of pitiless repulsion came
+into his eyes. It died out almost instantaneously, and he smiled and
+began to speak about the flowers. But Lady Holme had received her
+education. She knew what she was to youth that instinctively loves
+beauty.
+
+She sat down in a cane chair. It seemed to her as if people were
+scourging her with thongs of steel, as if she were bleeding from the
+strokes.
+
+She looked out across the lake.
+
+The butler brought tea and put it beside her. She did not hear him
+come or go. Behind her the waterfall roared down between the cypresses.
+Before her the lake spread out its grey, unruffled surface. And this was
+the baptism of Casa Felice, her baptism into a new life. Her agony was
+the more intense because she had never been an intellectual woman, had
+never lived the inner life. Always she had depended on outward things.
+Always she had been accustomed to bustle, movement, excitement,
+perpetual intercourse with people who paid her homage. Always she had
+lived for the world, and worshipped, because she had seen those around
+her worshipping, the body.
+
+And now all was taken from her. Without warning, without a moment
+for preparation, she was cast down into Hell. Even her youth was made
+useless to her.
+
+When she thought of that she began to cry, sitting there by the stone
+balustrade of the piazza, to cry convulsively. She remembered her pity
+for old age, for the monstrous loss it cannot cease from advertising.
+And now she, in her youth, had passed it on the road to the pit. Lady
+Cardington was a beautiful woman. She pitied herself bitterly because
+she was morbid, as many beautiful women are when they approach old age.
+But she was beautiful. She would always be beautiful. She might not
+think it, but she was still a power, could still inspire love. In
+her blanched face framed in white hair there was in truth a wonderful
+attraction.
+
+Whiteness--Lady Holme shuddered when she thought of whiteness,
+remembering what the glass had shown her.
+
+Fritz--his animal passion for her--his horror of her now--Miss
+Schley--their petty, concealed strife--Rupert Carey's love--Leo Ulford's
+desire of conquest--his father's strange, pathetic devotion--Winter
+falling at the feet of Spring--figures and events from the panorama of
+her life now ended flickered through her almost numbed mind, while the
+tears still ran down her face.
+
+And Robin Pierce?
+
+As she thought of him more life quickened in her mind.
+
+Since her accident he had written to her several times, ardent,
+tender letters, recalling all he had said to her, recounting again his
+adoration of her for her nature, her soul, the essence of her, the woman
+in her, telling her that this terror which had come upon her only made
+her dearer to him, that--as she knew--he had impiously dared almost to
+long for it, as for an order of release that would take effect in the
+liberation of her true self.
+
+These letters she had read, but they had not stirred her. She had told
+herself that Robin did not know, that he was a self-deceiver, that he
+did not understand his own nature, which was allied to the nature of
+every living man. But now, seeking some, even the smallest solace in
+the intense agony of desolation that was upon her, she caught--in her
+bleeding woman's heart--at this hand stretched out from Rome. She got
+up, went to her bedroom, unlocked her despatch-box, took out these
+letters of Robin's. They had not stirred her, yet she had kept them.
+Now she came down once more to the piazza, sat by the tea-table, opened
+them, read them, re-read them, whispered them over again and again.
+Something she must have; some hand she must catch at. She could not die
+in this freezing cold which she had never known, this cold that came out
+of the Inferno, at whose cavern mouth she stood. And Robin said he was
+there--Robin said he was there.
+
+She did not love Robin. It seemed to her now that it would be grotesque
+for her to love any man. Her face was not meant for love. But as she
+read these ardent, romantic letters, written since the tragedy that had
+overtaken her, she began to ask herself, with a fierce anxiety, whether
+what Robin affirmed could be the truth? Was he unlike other men? Was his
+nature capable of a devotion of the soul to another soul, of a devotion
+to which any physical ugliness, even any physical horror, would count as
+nothing?
+
+After that last scene with Fritz she felt as if he were no longer her
+husband, as if he were only a man who had fled from her in fear. She
+did not think any more of his rights, her duties. He had abandoned his
+rights. What duties could she have towards a man who was frightened when
+he looked at her? And indeed all the social and moral questions to which
+the average woman of the world pays--because she must pay--attention had
+suddenly ceased to exist for Lady Holme. She was no longer a woman of
+the world. All worldly matters had sunk down beneath her feet with her
+lost beauty. She had wanted to be free. Well, now she was surely free.
+Who would care what she did in the future?
+
+Robin said he was there.
+
+She thought that, unless she could feel that in world there was one man
+who wanted to take care of her, she must destroy herself. The thought
+grew in her as she sat there, till she said to herself, "If it is true
+what he says, perhaps I shall be able to live. If it is not true--"
+She looked over the stone balustrade at the grey waters of the lake.
+Twilight was darkening over them.
+
+Late that evening, when she was sitting in the big drawing-room staring
+at the floor, the butler came in with a telegram. She opened it and
+read:
+
+
+  "Sir Donald has told me you are at Casa Felice; arrive to-morrow
+  from Rome--ROBIN."
+
+
+"No answer," she said.
+
+So he was coming--to-morrow. The awful sense of desolation lifted
+slightly from her. A human being was travelling to her, was wanting to
+see her. To see her! She shuddered. Then fiercely she asked herself why
+she was afraid. She would not be afraid. She would trust in Robin. He
+was unlike other men. There had always been in him something that
+set him apart, a strangeness, a romance, a love of hidden things, a
+subtlety. If only he would still care for her, still feel towards her
+as he had felt, she could face the future, she thought. They might be
+apart. That did not matter. She had no thought of a close connection, of
+frequent intercourse even. She only wanted desperately, frantically,
+to know that someone who had loved her could love her still in spite of
+what had happened. If she could retain one deep affection she felt that
+she could live.
+
+The morrow would convince her.
+
+That night she did not sleep. She lay in bed and heard the water falling
+in the gorge, and when the dawn began to break she did a thing she had
+not done for a long time.
+
+She got out of bed, knelt down and prayed--prayed to Him who had dealt
+terribly with her that He would be merciful when Robin came.
+
+When it was daylight and the Italian maid knocked at her door she told
+her to get out a plain, dark dress. She did her hair herself with the
+utmost simplicity. That at least was still beautiful. Then she went down
+and walked in the high garden above the lake. The greyness had lifted
+and the sky was blue. The mellowness rather than the sadness of autumn
+was apparent, throned on the tall mountains whose woods were bathed in
+sunshine. All along the great old wall, that soared forty feet from
+the water, roses were climbing. Scarlet and white geraniums bloomed in
+discoloured ancient vases. Clumps of oleanders showed pink showers
+of blossoms. Tall bamboos reared their thin heads towards the tufted
+summits of palms that suggested Africa. Monstrous cypresses aspired,
+with a sort of haughty resignation, above their brother trees. The bees
+went to and fro. Flies circled and settled. Lizards glided across the
+warm stones and rustled into hiding among the ruddy fallen leaves. And
+always the white water sang in the gorge as it rushed towards the piazza
+of Casa Felice.
+
+And Lady Holme tried to hope.
+
+Yet, as she walked slowly to and fro amid the almost rank luxuriance
+of the garden, she was gnawed by a terrible anxiety. The dreadful
+humbleness, the shrinking cowardice of the unsightly human being invaded
+her. She strove to put them from her. She strove to call Robin's own
+arguments and assertions to her aid. What she had been she still was
+in all essentials. Her self was unharmed, existed, could love, hate, be
+tender, be passionate as before. Viola was there still within her,
+the living spirit to which a name had been given when she was a little
+child. The talent was there which had spoken, which could still speak,
+through her voice. The beating heart was there which could still speak
+through her actions. The mysteries of the soul still pursued their
+secret courses within her, like far-off subterranean streams. The
+essential part of her remained as it had been. Only a little outside bit
+of a framework had been twisted awry. Could that matter very much? Had
+she not perhaps been morbid in her despair?
+
+She determined to take courage. She told herself that if she allowed
+this dreadful, invading humbleness way in her she would lose all power
+to dominate another by showing that she had ceased to dominate herself.
+If she met Robin in fear and trembling she would actually teach him to
+despise her. If she showed that she thought herself changed,
+horrible, he would inevitably catch her thought and turn it to her own
+destruction. Men despise those who despise themselves. She knew that,
+and she argued with herself, fought with herself. If Robin loved the
+angel; surely he could still love. For if there were an angel within
+her it had not been harmed. And she leaned on the stone wall and prayed
+again while the roses touched her altered face.
+
+It seemed to her then that courage was sent to her. She felt less
+terrified of what was before her, as if something had risen up within
+her upon which she could lean, as if her soul began to support the
+trembling, craven thing that would betray her, began to teach it how to
+be still.
+
+She did not feel happy, but she felt less desperately miserable than she
+had felt since the accident.
+
+After _dejeuner_ she walked again in the garden. As the time drew near
+for Robin to arrive, the dreadful feverish anxiety of the early morning
+awoke again within her. She had not conquered herself. Again the thought
+of suicide came upon her, and she felt that her life or death were in
+the hands of this man whom yet she did not love. They were in his hands
+because he was a human being and she was one. There are straits in
+which the child of life, whom the invisible hand that is extended in
+a religion has not yet found, must find in the darkness a human hand
+stretched out to it or sink down in utter terror and perhaps perish.
+Lady Holme was in such a strait. She knew it. She said to herself quite
+plainly that if Robin failed to stretch out his hand to her she could
+not go on living. It was clear to her that her life or death depended
+upon whether he remained true to what he had said was his ideal, or
+whether he proved false to it and showed himself such a man as Fritz, as
+a thousand others.
+
+She sickened with anxiety as the moments passed.
+
+Now, leaning upon the wall, she began to scan the lake. Presently she
+saw the steamer approaching the landing-stage of Carate on the opposite
+bank. The train from Rome had arrived. But Robin would doubtless come
+by boat. There was at least another hour to wait. She left the wall
+and walked quickly up and down, moving her hands and her lips. Now she
+almost wished he were not coming. She recalled the whole story of her
+acquaintance with Robin--his adoration of her when she was a girl, his
+wish to marry her, his melancholy when she refused him, his persistent
+affection for her after she had married Fritz, his persistent belief
+that there was that within her which Fritz did not understand and could
+never satisfy, his persistent obstinacy in asserting that he had the
+capacity to understand and content this hidden want. Was that true?
+
+Fritz had cared for nothing but the body, yet she had loved Fritz. She
+did not love Robin. Yet there was a feeling in her that if he proved
+true to his ideal now she might love him in the end. If only he would
+love her--after he knew.
+
+She heard a sound of oars. The blood rushed to her face. She drew back
+from the wall and hurried into her house. All the morning she had been
+making up her mind to go to meet Robin at once in the sunlight, to let
+him know all at once. But now, in terror, she went to her room. With
+trembling hands she pinned on a hat; she took out of a drawer the thick
+veil she wore when travelling and tied it tightly over her face. Panic
+seized her.
+
+There was a knock at the door, the announcement that a signore was
+waiting in the drawing-room for the signora.
+
+Lady Holme felt an almost ungovernable sensation of physical nausea. She
+went to her dressing-case and drank one or two burning drops of eau de
+Cologne. Then she pulled down the veil under her chin and stood in the
+middle of the room for several minutes without moving. Then she went
+downstairs quickly and went quickly into the drawing-room.
+
+Robin was there, standing by the window. He looked excited, with an
+excitement of happiness, and this gave to him an aspect of almost boyish
+youth. His long black eyes shone with eagerness when she came into the
+room. But when he saw the veil his face changed.
+
+"You don't trust me!" he said, without any greeting.
+
+She went up to him and put out her hand.
+
+"Robin!" she said.
+
+"You don't trust me," he repeated.
+
+He took her hand. His was hot.
+
+"Robin--I'm a coward," she said.
+
+Her voice quivered.
+
+"Oh, my dearest!" he exclaimed, melted in a moment.
+
+He took her other hand, and she felt his hands throbbing. His clasp
+was so ardent that it startled her into forgetting everything for one
+instant, everything that except these clasping hands loved her hands,
+loved her. That instant was exquisitely sweet to her. There was a
+stinging sweetness in it, a mystery of sweetness, as if their four hands
+were four souls longing to be lost in one another.
+
+"Now you'll trust me," he said.
+
+She released her hands and immediately her terror of doubt returned.
+
+"Let us go into the garden," she answered.
+
+He followed her to the path beside the wall.
+
+"I looked for you from here," she said.
+
+"I did not see you."
+
+"No. When I heard the boat I--Robin, I'm afraid--I'm afraid."
+
+"Of me, Viola?"
+
+He laughed joyously.
+
+"Take off your veil," he said.
+
+"No, no--not yet. I want to tell you first--"
+
+"To tell me what?"
+
+"That my--that my--Robin, I'm not beautiful now."
+
+Her voice quivered again.
+
+"You tell me so," he answered.
+
+"It's true."
+
+"I don't believe it."
+
+"But," she began, almost desperately, "it's true, Robin, oh, it's true!
+When Fritz--"
+
+She stopped. She was choking.
+
+"Oh--Fritz!" he said with scathing contempt.
+
+"No, no, listen! You've got to listen." She put her hand on his arm.
+"When Fritz saw me--afterwards he--he was afraid of me. He couldn't
+speak to me. He just looked and said--and said--"
+
+Tears were running down behind the veil. He put up his hand to hers,
+which still touched his arm.
+
+"Don't tell me what he said. What do I care? Viola, you know I've almost
+longed for this--no, not that, but--can't you understand that when one
+loves a woman one loves something hidden, something mystical? It's so
+much more than a face that one loves. One doesn't want to live in a
+house merely because it's got a nice front door."
+
+He laughed again as if he were half ashamed of his own feeling.
+
+"Is that true, Robin?"
+
+The sound of her voice told him that he need not be afraid to be
+passionate.
+
+"Sit down here," he said.
+
+They had reached an old stone bench at the end of the garden where the
+woods began. Two cypresses towered behind it, sad-looking sentinels.
+There was a gap in the wall here through which the lake could be seen as
+one sat upon the bench.
+
+"I want to make you understand, to make you trust me."
+
+She sat down without speaking, and he sat beside her.
+
+"Viola," he said, "there are many men who love only what they can see,
+and never think of the spirit behind it. They care only for a woman's
+body. For them the woman's body is the woman. I put it rather brutally.
+What they can touch, what they can kiss, what they can hold in their
+arms is all to them. They are unconscious of the distant, untameable
+woman, the lawless woman who may be free in the body that is captive,
+who may be unknown in the body that is familiar, who may even be pure in
+the body that is defiled as she is immortal though her body is mortal.
+These men love the flesh only. But there are at least some men who love
+the spirit. They love the flesh, too, because it manifests the spirit,
+but to them the spirit is the real thing. They are always stretching out
+their arms to that. The hearth can't satisfy them. They demand the fire.
+The fire, the fire!" he repeated, as if the word warmed him. "I've so
+often thought of this, imagined this. It's as if I'd actually foreseen
+it."
+
+He spoke with gathering excitement.
+
+"What?" she murmured.
+
+"That some day the woman men--those men I've spoken of--loved would
+be struck down, and the real woman, the woman of the true beauty, the
+mystic, the spirit woman, would be set free. If this had not happened
+you could perhaps never have known who was the man that really loved
+you--that loved the real you, the you that lies so far beyond the flesh,
+the you that has sung and suffered--"
+
+"Ah, suffered!" she said.
+
+But there was a note of something that was not sorrow in her voice.
+
+"If you want to know the man I mean," Robin said, "lift up your veil,
+Viola."
+
+She sat quite still for a moment, a moment that seemed very long. Then
+she put up both hands to her head, untied the veil and let it fall into
+her lap. He looked at her, and there was silence. They heard the bees
+humming. There were many among the roses on the wall. She had turned her
+face fully towards him, but she kept her eyes on the veil that lay in
+her lap. It was covered with little raised black spots. She began to
+count them. As the number mounted she felt her body turning gradually
+cold.
+
+"Fifteen--sixteen-seventeen"--she formed the words with her
+lips, striving to concentrate her whole soul upon this useless
+triviality--"eighteen--nineteen--twenty."
+
+Little drops of moisture came out upon her temples. Still the silence
+continued. She knew that all this time Robin was looking into her face.
+She felt his eyes like two knives piercing her face.
+
+"Twenty-one--twenty-two--"
+
+"Viola!"
+
+He spoke at last and his voice was extraordinary. It was husky, and
+sounded desperate and guilty.
+
+"Well?" she said, still looking at the spots.
+
+"Now you know the man I spoke of."
+
+Yes, it was a desperate voice and hard in its desperation.
+
+"You mean that you are the man?"
+
+Still she did not look up. After a pause she heard him say:
+
+"Yes, that I am the man."
+
+Then she looked up. His face was scarlet, like a face flushed with
+guilt. His eyes met hers with a staring glance, yet they were furtive.
+His hands were clenched on his knees. When she looked at him he began to
+smile.
+
+"Viola," he said, "Viola."
+
+He unclenched his hands and put them out towards her, as if to take her
+hands. She did not move.
+
+"Poor Robin!" she said.
+
+"Poor--but--what do you mean?" he stammered.
+
+He never turned his eyes from her face.
+
+"Poor Robin!--but it isn't your fault."
+
+Then she put out her hand and touched his gently.
+
+"My fault?
+
+"That it was all a fancy, all a weaving of words. You want to be what
+you thought you were, but you can't be."
+
+"You're wrong, Viola, you're utterly wrong--"
+
+"Hush, Robin! That woman you spoke of--that woman knows."
+
+He cleared his throat, got up, went over to the wall, leaned his arms
+upon it and hid his face on them. There were tears in his eyes. At
+that moment he was suffering more than she was. His soul was rent by an
+abject sense of loss, an abject sense of guilty impotence and shame.
+It was frightful that he could not be what he wished to be, what he had
+thought he was. He longed to comfort her and could not do anything
+but plunge a sword into her heart. He longed to surround her with
+tenderness--yes, he was sure he longed--but he could only hold up to
+her in the sun her loneliness. And he had lost--what had he not lost? A
+dream of years, an imagination that had been his inseparable and dearest
+companion. His loneliness was intense in that moment as was hers. The
+tears seemed to scald his eyes. In his heart he cursed God for not
+permitting him to be what he longed to be, to feel what he longed to
+feel. It seemed to him monstrous, intolerable, that even our emotions
+are arranged for us as are arranged the events of our lives. He felt
+like a doll, a horrible puppet.
+
+"Poor old Robin!"
+
+She was standing beside him, and in her voice there was, just for a
+moment, the sound that sometimes comes into a mother's voice when she
+speaks to her little child in the dark.
+
+At the moment when he knew he did not love the white angel she stood
+beside him.
+
+And she thought that she was only a wretched woman.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XX
+
+ROBIN had gone. He had gone, still protesting that Lady Holme was
+deceiving herself, protesting desperately, with the mistaken chivalry of
+one who was not only a gentleman to his finger-tips but who was also
+an almost fanatical lover of his own romance. After recovering from
+the first shock of his disillusion, and her strange reception of it,
+so different from anything he could have imagined possible in her, or
+indeed in any woman who had lived as she had, he had said everything
+that was passionate, everything that fitted in with his old
+protestations when she was beautiful. He had spoken, perhaps, even more
+to recall himself than to convince her, but he had not succeeded in
+either effort, and a strange, mingled sense of tragic sadness and
+immense relief invaded him as the width of waterway grew steadily larger
+between his boat and Casa Felice. He could have wept for her and for
+himself. He could even have wept for humanity. Yet he felt the comfort
+of one from whom an almost intolerable strain has just been removed. To
+a man of his calibre, sensitive, almost feminine in his subtlety, the
+situation had been exquisitely painful. He had felt what Viola was
+feeling as well as what he was feeling. He had struggled like a creature
+taken in a net. And how useless it had all been! He found himself
+horribly inferior to her. Her behaviour at this critical moment had
+proved to him that in his almost fantastic conception of her he had
+shown real insight. Then why had his heart betrayed his intellect? Why
+had his imagination proved true metal, his affection false? He asked
+himself these questions. He searched his own nature, as many a man has
+done in moments when he has found himself unworthy. And he was met by
+mystery, by the "It was impossible for me!" which stings the soul that
+would be strong. He remembered Carey's words that night in Half Moon
+Street when Sir Donald had accompanied him home after the dinner in
+Cadogan Square. Sir Donald had gone. He and Carey were alone, and he had
+said that if one loves, one loves the kernel not the shell. And Carey
+had said, "I think if the shell is a beautiful shell, and becomes
+suddenly broken, it makes a devil of a lot of difference in what most
+people think of the kernel." And when he--Robin--had replied, "It
+wouldn't to me," Carey had abruptly exclaimed, "I think it would." After
+Carey had gone Robin remembered very well saying to himself that it was
+strange no man will believe you if you hint at the truth of your true
+self. That night he had not known his true self and Carey had known it.
+But then, had he loved the shell only? He could not believe it. He
+felt bewildered. Even now, as the boat crept onward through the
+falling darkness, he felt that he loved Viola, but as someone who had
+disappeared or who was dead. This woman whom he had just left was not
+Viola. And yet she was. When he was not looking at her and she spoke to
+him, the past seemed to take the form of the present. When she had worn
+the veil and had touched him all his pulses had leaped. But when she had
+touched him with those same hands after the veil had fallen, there
+had been frost in his veins. Nothing in his body had responded. The
+independence of the flesh appalled him. It had a mind of its own then.
+It chose and acted quite apart from the spirit which dwelt in it. It
+even defied that spirit. And the eyes? They had become almost a terror
+to him. He thought of them as a slave thinks of a cruel master.
+Were they to coerce his soul? Were they to force his heart from its
+allegiance? He had always been accustomed to think that the spirit was
+essentially the governing thing in man, that indestructible, fierce,
+beautiful flame which surely outlives death and time. But now he found
+himself thinking of the flesh, the corruptible part of man that mingles
+its dust with the earth, as dominant over the spirit. For the first
+time, and because of his impotence to force his body to feel as his
+spirit wished it to feel, he doubted if there were a future for the
+soul, if there were such a condition as immortality. He reached Villa
+d'Este in a condition of profound depression, almost bordering on
+despair.
+
+Meanwhile Viola, standing by the garden wall, had watched the boat
+that carried Robin disappear on the water. Till it was only a speck she
+watched. It vanished. Evening came on. Still she stood there. She did
+not feel very sad. The strange, dreamlike sensation of the preceding day
+had returned to her, but with a larger vagueness that robbed it of some
+of its former poignancy. It seemed to her that she felt as a spirit
+might feel--detached. She remembered once seeing a man, who called
+himself an "illusionist," displaying a woman's figure suspended
+apparently in mid-air. He took a wand and passed it over, under, around
+the woman to show that she was unattached to anything, that she did not
+rest upon anything. Viola thought that she was like that woman. She was
+not embittered. She was not even crushed. Her impulse of pity, when she
+understood what Robin was feeling, had been absolutely genuine. It had
+rushed upon her. It remained with her. But now it was far less definite,
+and embraced not only Robin but surely other men whom she had never
+known or even seen. They could not help themselves. It was not their
+fault. They were made in a certain way. They were governed. It seemed to
+her that she looked out vaguely over a world of slaves, the serfs of God
+who have never been emancipated. She had no hope. But just then she had
+no fear. The past did not ebb from her, nor did the future steal towards
+her. The tides were stilled. The pulses of life were stopped. Everything
+was wrapped in a cold, grey calm. She had never been a very thoughtful
+woman. She had not had much time for thought. That is what she herself
+would probably have said. Seldom had she puzzled her head over the
+mysteries of existence. Even now, when she confronted the great mystery
+of her own, she did not think very definitely. Before Robin came her
+mind had been in a fever. Now that he was gone the fever had gone with
+him. Would it ever return? She did not ask or wonder.
+
+The night fell and the servant came to summon her to dinner. She shook
+her head.
+
+"The signora will not eat anything?"
+
+"No, thank you."
+
+She took her arms from the wall and looked at the man.
+
+"Could I have the boat?"
+
+"The signora wishes to go on the lake?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"I will tell Paolo."
+
+Two or three minutes later the boy who had sung came to say that the
+boat was ready.
+
+Lady Holme fetched a cloak, and went down the dark stone staircase
+between the lichen-covered walls to the tall iron gate. The boat was
+lying by the outer steps. She got in and Paolo took the oars.
+
+"Where does the signora wish to go?"
+
+"Anywhere out on the lake."
+
+He pushed off. Soon the noise of the waterfall behind Casa Felice died
+away, the spectral facade faded and only the plash of the oars and the
+tinkle of fishermen's bells above the nets, floating here and there in
+the lake, were audible. The distant lights of mountain villages gleamed
+along the shores, and the lights of the stars gleamed in the clear sky.
+
+Now that she was away from the land Lady Holme became more conscious of
+herself and of life. The gentle movement of the boat promoted an echoing
+mental movement in her. Thoughts glided through the shadows of her soul
+as the boat glided through the shadows of the night. Her mind was like a
+pilgrim, wandering in the darkness cast by the soul.
+
+She felt, first, immensely ignorant. She had scarcely ever, perhaps
+never, consciously felt immensely ignorant before. She felt also very
+poor, very small and very dingy, like a woman very badly dressed. She
+felt, finally, that she was the most insignificant of all the living
+things under the stars to the stars and all they watched, but that, to
+herself, she was of a burning, a flaming significance.
+
+There seemed to be bells everywhere in the lake. The water was full of
+their small, persistent voices.
+
+So had her former life been full of small, persistent voices, but
+now, abruptly, they were all struck into silence, and she was left
+listening--for what? For some far-off but larger voice beyond?
+
+"What am I to do? What am I to do?"
+
+Now she began to say this within herself. The grey calm was floating
+away from her spirit, and she began to realise what had happened that
+afternoon. She remembered that just before Robin came she had made up
+her mind that, though she did not love him, he held the matter of her
+life or death in his power. Well, if that were so, he had decided. The
+dice had been thrown and death had come up. No hand had been stretched
+out in the darkness to the child.
+
+She looked round her. On every side she saw smooth water, a still
+surface which hid depths. At the prow of the boat shone a small lantern,
+which cast before the boat an arrow of light. And as the boat moved
+this arrow perpetually attacked the darkness in front. It was like the
+curiosity of man attacking the impenetrable mysteries of God. It seemed
+to penetrate, but always new darkness disclosed itself beyond, new
+darkness flowed silently around.
+
+Was the darkness the larger voice?
+
+She did not say this to herself. Her mind was not of the definite
+species that frames such silent questions often. But, like all human
+beings plunged in the strangeness of a terror that is absolutely new,
+and left to struggle in it quite alone, she thought a thousand things
+that she did not even know she thought, her mind touched many verges of
+which she was not aware. There were within her tremendous activities
+of which she was scarcely conscious. She was like a woman who wakes at
+night without knowing why, and hears afterwards that there was a tumult
+in the city where she dwelt.
+
+Gradually, along devious ways, she came to the thought that life had
+done with her. It seemed to her that life said to her, "Woman, what
+have I to do with thee?" The man who had sworn to protect her could
+not endure to look at her. The man who had vowed that he loved her soul
+shrank before her face. She had never been a friend to women. Why should
+they wish to be her friends now? They would not wish it. And if they did
+she felt their friendship would be useless to her, more--horrible. She
+would rather have shown her shattered face to a thousand men than to ten
+women. She had never "bothered" much about religion. No God seemed near
+her now. She had no sense of being chastened because she was loved. On
+the other hand, she did feel as if she had been caught by a torturer who
+did not mean to let her go.
+
+It became obvious to her that there was no place for her in life, and
+presently she returned to the conclusion that, totally unloved, she
+could not continue to exist.
+
+She began definitely to contemplate self-destruction.
+
+She looked at the little arrow of light beyond the boat's prow. Like
+that little arrow she must go out into the darkness. When? Could she go
+to-night? If not, probably she could never go at all by her own will and
+act. It should be done to-night then, abruptly, without much thought.
+For thought is dangerous and often paralysing.
+
+She spoke to the boat boy. He answered. They fell into conversation.
+She asked him about his family, his life, whether he would have to be
+a soldier; whether he had a sweetheart. She forced herself to listen
+attentively to his replies. He was a responsive boy and soon began to
+talk volubly, letting the oars trail idly in the water. With energy he
+paraded his joyous youth before her. Even in his touches of melancholy
+there was hope. His happiness confirmed her in her resolution. She put
+herself in contrast with this boy, and her heart sank below the sources
+of tears into a dry place, like the valley of bones.
+
+"Will you turn towards Casa Feli--towards the house now," she said
+presently.
+
+The boat swung round, and instantly the boy began to sing.
+
+"Yes, I can do it to-night," she thought.
+
+His happy singing entered like iron into her soul.
+
+When the pale facade of Casa Felice was visible once more, detaching
+itself from the surrounding darkness, she said to the boy carelessly:
+
+"Where do you put the boat at night?"
+
+"The signora has not seen?"
+
+"No."
+
+"Under the house. There is deep water there. One can swim for five
+minutes without coming out into the open."
+
+"I should like to see that place. Can I get out of the boat there?"
+
+"Si, signora. There is a staircase leading into the piazza by the
+waterfall."
+
+"Then row in."
+
+"Si, signora."
+
+He was beginning to sing again, but suddenly he stopped, looked over his
+shoulder and listened.
+
+"What is it?" she asked quickly.
+
+"There is a boat, signora."
+
+"Where."
+
+She looked into the darkness but saw nothing.
+
+"Close to the house, signora."
+
+"But how do you know?"
+
+"I heard the oars. The man in the boat was not rowing, but just as
+I began to sing he began to row. When I stopped singing he stopped
+rowing."
+
+"You didn't see the boat?"
+
+"No, signora. It carries no light."
+
+He looked at her mysteriously.
+
+"_It may be the contrabbandieri_."
+
+"Smugglers?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+He turned his head over his shoulder and whistled, in a peculiar way.
+There was no reply. Then he bent down over the gunwale of the boat till
+his ear nearly touched the water, and listened.
+
+"The boat has stopped. It must be near us."
+
+His whole body seemed quivering with attentive life, like a terrier's
+when it stands to be unchained.
+
+"Might it not be a fisherman?" asked Lady Holme.
+
+He shook his head.
+
+"This is not the hour."
+
+"Some tourists, perhaps, making an excursion?"
+
+"It is too far. They never come here at night."
+
+His eyes stared, his attitude was so intensely alert and his manner so
+mysterious that, despite her desperate preoccupation, Lady Holme found
+herself distracted for a moment. Her mind was detached from herself, and
+fixed upon this hidden boat and its occupant or occupants.
+
+"You think it is _contrabbandieri_?" she whispered. He nodded.
+
+"I have been one, signora."
+
+"You!"
+
+"Yes, when I was a boy, in the winter. Once, when we were running for
+the shore, on a December night, the _carabinieri_ fired on us and killed
+Gaetano Cremona."
+
+"Your companion?"
+
+"Yes. He was sixteen and he died. The boat was full of his blood."
+
+She shuddered.
+
+"Row in," she said. "That boat must have gone."
+
+"Non, signora. It has not. It is close by and the oars are out of the
+water."
+
+He spoke with certainty, as if he saw the boat. Then, reluctantly, he
+dipped his oars in the lake, and rowed towards the house, keeping his
+head half turned and staring into the darkness with eyes that were still
+full of mystery and profound attention.
+
+Lady Holme looked over the water too, but she saw nothing upon its calm
+surface.
+
+"Go into the boat-house," she said.
+
+Paolo nodded without speaking. His lips were parted.
+
+"Chi e la?" she heard him whisper to himself.
+
+They were close to the house now. Its high, pale front, full of
+shuttered windows, loomed over them, and the roar of the waterfall was
+loud in their ears. Paolo turned the boat towards his right, and, almost
+directly, Lady Holme saw a dark opening in the solid stone blocks on
+which the house was built. The boat glided through it into cover, and
+the arrow of light at the prow pierced ebon blackness, while the
+plash of the oars made a curious sound, full of sudden desolation and
+weariness. A bat flitted over the arrow of light and vanished, and the
+head of a swimming rat was visible for a moment, pursued by a wrinkle on
+the water.
+
+"How dark it is here," Lady Holme said in a low voice. "And what strange
+noises there are."
+
+There was terror in the sound of the waterfall heard under this
+curving roof of stone. It sounded like a quantity of disputing voices,
+quarrelling in the blackness of the night. The arrow of light lay on a
+step, and the boat's prow grated gently against a large ring of rusty
+iron.
+
+"And you tie up the boat here at night?" she asked as she got up.
+
+"Si, signora."
+
+While she stood on the step, close to the black water, he passed the
+rope through the ring, and tied it deftly in a loose knot that any
+backward movement of the boat would tighten. She watched with profound
+attention his hands moving quickly in the faint light cast by the
+lantern.
+
+"How well you tie it," she said.
+
+He smiled.
+
+"Si, signora."
+
+"Is it easy to untie?"
+
+"Si, signora."
+
+"Show me, will you? It--it holds so well that I should have thought it
+would be difficult."
+
+He looked up at her with a flash of surprise. Something in her voice had
+caught his young attention sharply. She smiled at him when she saw the
+keen inquiry in his large eyes.
+
+"I'm interested in all these little things you do so well," she said.
+
+He flushed with pride, and immediately untied the knot, carefully,
+showing her exactly how he did it.
+
+"Thank you. I see. It's very ingenious."
+
+"Si, signora. I can do many things like that."
+
+"You are a clever boy, Paolo."
+
+He tied the knot again, unhooked the lantern; jumped out of the boat,
+and lighted her up the staircase to a heavy wooden door. In another
+moment she stood on the piazza close to the waterfall. The cold spray
+from it fell on her face. He pushed the door to, but did not lock it.
+
+"You leave it like that at night?" she asked.
+
+"Non, signora. Before I go to bed I lock it."
+
+"I see."
+
+She saw a key sticking out from the door.
+
+"_A rivederci_, Paolo."
+
+"_A rivederci_, signora."
+
+He took off his hat and went swiftly away. The light of the lantern
+danced on the pavement of the piazza, and, for one instant, on the white
+foam of the water falling between the cypresses.
+
+When Viola was alone on the piazza she went to the stone balustrade and
+looked over it at the lake. Was there a boat close by? She could not see
+it. The chiming bells of the fishermen came up to her, mingling with the
+noise of the cascade. She took out her watch and held it up close to
+her eyes. The hour was half-past nine. She wondered what time Italian
+servants went to bed.
+
+The butler came out and begged to know if she would not eat something.
+He seemed so distressed at her having missed dinner, that she went into
+the house, sat down at the dining table and made a pretence of eating. A
+clock struck ten as she finished.
+
+"It is so warm that I am going to sit out in the piazza," she said.
+
+"Will the signora take coffee?"
+
+"No--yes, bring me some there. And tell my maid--tell the servants they
+needn't sit up. I may stay out quite late. If I do, I'll lock the door
+on to the piazza when I go in."
+
+"Si, signora."
+
+When she reached the piazza she saw a shining red spark just above
+the balustrade. Paolo was there smoking a black cigar and leaning over
+sideways.
+
+"What are you looking for?" she asked.
+
+"That boat, signora. It has not gone."
+
+"How do you know? It may have gone when we were in the boat-house."
+
+He shook his head.
+
+"You could not have heard the oars through the noise of the waterfall."
+
+"Si, signora. It has not gone. Shall I take the boat and--"
+
+"No, no," she interrupted quickly. "What does it matter? Go and have
+supper."
+
+"I have had it, signora."
+
+"Then, when you have finished smoking, you'd better go to bed."
+
+She forced herself to smile lightly.
+
+"Boys like you need plenty of sleep."
+
+"Four hours is enough, signora."
+
+"No, no. You should go to bed early."
+
+She saw an odd expression come into his face. He looked over at the
+water, then at her, with a curious dawning significance, that would
+almost have been impudent if it had not been immensely young and full of
+a kind of gnomish sympathy.
+
+"I'll go to bed, signora!" he said.
+
+Then he looked at her again and there were doubt and wonder in his eyes.
+
+She turned away, with a sickness at her heart. She knew exactly what he
+had thought, was thinking. The suspicion had crossed his mind that
+she knew why the hidden boat was there, that she wished no one else to
+suspect why it was there. And then had followed the thought, "Ma--per
+questa signora--non e possibile."
+
+At certain crises of feeling, a tiny incident will often determine some
+vital act. So it was now. The fleeting glance in a carelessly expressive
+boy's eyes at this moment gave to Lady Holme's mind the last touch it
+needed to acquire the impetus which would carry it over the edge of the
+precipice into the abyss. The look in Paolo's eyes said to her, "Life
+has done with you. Throw it away." And she knew that though she had
+thought she had already decided to throw it away that night, she had
+really not decided. Secretly she had been hesitating. Now there was no
+more hesitation in her. She drank her coffee and had the cup taken away,
+and ordered the lights in the drawing-room to be put out.
+
+"When I come in I shall go straight up to bed," she said. "Leave me a
+candle in the hall."
+
+The lights went out behind the windows. Blank darkness replaced the
+yellow gleam that had shone upon them. The two houses on either side of
+the piazza were wrapped in silence. Presently there was a soft noise of
+feet crossing the pavement. It was Paolo going to lock the door leading
+to the boathouse. Lady Holme moved round sharply in her chair to watch
+him. He bent down. With a swift turn of his brown wrists he secured the
+door and pulled the key out of the lock. She opened her lips to call out
+something to him, but when she saw him look at the key doubtfully, then
+towards her, she said nothing. And he put it back into the keyhole. When
+he did that she sighed. Perhaps a doubt had again come into his young
+mind. But, if so, it had come too late. He slipped away smiling, half
+ironically, to himself.
+
+Lady Holme sat still. She had wrapped a white cloth cloak round her.
+She put up her hand to the disfigured side of her face, and touched it,
+trying to see its disfigurement as the blind see, by feeling. She kept
+her hand there, and her hand recognized ugliness vividly. After two or
+three minutes she took her hand away, got up and walked to and fro in
+the piazza, very near to the balustrade.
+
+Now she was thinking fiercely.
+
+She thought of Fritz. What would he feel when he knew? Shocked for a
+moment, no doubt. After all, they had been very close to each other, in
+body at least, if not in soul. And the memory of the body would surely
+cause him to suffer a little, to think, "I held it often, and now it is
+sodden and cold." At least he must think something like that, and his
+body must shudder in sympathy with the catastrophe that had overtaken
+its old companion. She felt a painful yearning to see Fritz again. Yet
+she did not say to herself that she loved him any more. Even before the
+accident she had begun to realise that she had not found in Fritz the
+face of truth among the crowd of shams which all women seek, ignorantly
+or not. And since the accident--there are things that kill even a
+woman's love abruptly. And for a dead love there is no resurrection.
+
+Yet to-night she felt infinitely tender over Fritz, as if she stood by
+him again and saw the bandage darkened by the red stain.
+
+Then she thought of the song she had sung to Lady Cardington, the song
+which had surely opened the eyes of her own drowsy, if not actually
+sleeping, heart:
+
+
+  "Tutto al mondo e vano:
+   Nell'amore ogni dolcezza."
+
+
+It was horribly true to her to-night. She could imagine now, in her
+utter desolation, that for love a woman could easily sacrifice the
+world. But she had had the world--all she called the world--ruthlessly
+taken from her, and nothing had been given to her to fill its place.
+Possibly before the accident she might have recoiled from the idea of
+giving up the world for love. But now, as she walked to and fro, it
+seemed to her as if a woman isolated from everything with love possessed
+the world and all that is therein. Vaguely she remembered the story she
+had heard about this very house, Casa Felice. There had been a romance
+connected with it. Two lovers had fled here, had lived here for a long
+time. She imagined them now, sitting together at night in this piazza,
+hearing the waterfall together, looking at the calm lake together,
+watching the stars together. The sound of the water was terrible to her.
+To them how beautiful it must have been, how beautiful the light of the
+stars, and the lonely gardens stretching along the lake, and the dim
+paths between the cypresses, and the great silence that floated over the
+lake to listen to the waterfall. And all these things were terrible to
+her--all. Not one was beautiful. Each one seemed to threaten her, to
+say to her, "Leave us, we are not for such as you." Well, she would obey
+these voices. She would go. She wrapped the cloak more closely round
+her, went to the balustrade and leaned over it looking at the water.
+
+It seemed to her as if her life had been very trivial. She thought now
+that she had never really enjoyed anything. She looked upon her life as
+if it were down there in the water just beneath her, and she saw it as
+a broken thing, a thing in many fragments. And the fragments, however
+carefully and deftly arranged, could surely never have been fitted
+together and become a complete whole. Everything in her life had been
+awry as her face was now awry, and she had not realised it. Her love for
+Fritz, and his--what he had called his, at least--for her, had seemed to
+her once to be a round and beautiful thing, a circle of passion without
+a flaw. How distorted, misshapen, absurd it had really been. Nothing
+in her life had been carried through to a definite end. Even her petty
+struggle with Miss Schley had been left unfinished. Those who had loved
+her had been like spectres, and now, like spectres, had faded away. And
+all through their spectral love she had clung to Fritz. She had clasped
+the sand like a mad-woman, and never felt the treacherous grains
+shifting between her arms at the touch of every wind.
+
+A sudden passionate fury of longing woke in her to have one week, one
+day, one hour of life, one hour of life now that her eyes were open, one
+moment only--even one moment. She felt that she had had nothing, that
+every other human being must have known the _dolcezza_, the ineffable,
+the mysterious ecstasy, the one and only thing worth the having,
+that she alone had been excluded, when she was beautiful, from the
+participation in joy that was her right, and that now, in her ugliness,
+she was irrevocably cast out from it.
+
+It was unjust. Suddenly she faced a God without justice in His heart,
+all-powerful and not just. She faced such a God and she knew Hell.
+
+Swiftly she turned from the balustrade, went to the door by the
+waterfall, unlocked it and descended the stone staircase. It was very
+dark. She had to feel her way. When she reached the last step she could
+just see the boat lying against it in the black water. She put out her
+hand and felt for the ring through which the rope was slipped. The rope
+was wet. It took her some minutes to undo it. Then she got into the
+boat. Her eyes were more accustomed to the darkness now, and she could
+see the arched opening which gave access to the lake. She found the
+oars, pushed them into the rowlocks, and pulled gently to the opening.
+The boat struck against the wall and grated along it. She stood up and
+thrust one hand against the stone, leaning over to the side. The boat
+went away swiftly, and she nearly fell into the water, but managed
+to save herself by a rapid movement. She sank down, feeling horribly
+afraid. Yet, a moment after, she asked herself why she had not let
+herself go. It was too dark there under the house. Out in the open air
+it would be different, it would be easier. She wanted the stars above
+her. She did not know why she wanted them, why she wanted anything now.
+
+The boat slipped out from the low archway into the open water.
+
+It was a pale and delicate night, one of those autumn nights that are
+full of a white mystery. A thin mist lay about the water, floated among
+the lower woods. Higher up, the mountains rose out of it. Their green
+sides looked black and soft in the starlight, their summits strangely
+remote and inaccessible. Through the mist, here and there, shone faintly
+the lights of the scattered villages. The bells in the water were still
+ringing languidly, and their voices emphasised the pervading silence, a
+silence full of the pensive melancholy of Nature in decline.
+
+Viola rowed slowly out towards the middle of the lake. Awe had come upon
+her. There seemed a mystical presence in the night, something far away
+but attentive, a mind concentrated upon the night, upon Nature, upon
+herself. She was very conscious of it, and it seemed to her not as if
+eyes, but as if a soul were watching her and everything about her; the
+stars and the mountains, the white mist, even the movement of the boat.
+This concentrated, mystical attention oppressed her. It was like a soft,
+impalpable weight laid upon her. She rowed faster.
+
+But now it seemed to her as if she were being followed. Casa Felice had
+already disappeared. The shore was hidden in the darkness. She could
+only see vaguely the mountain-tops. She paused, then dipped the oars
+again, but again--after two or three strokes--she had the sensation
+that she was being followed. She recalled Paolo's action when they were
+returning to Casa Felice in the evening, leaned over the boat's side and
+put her ear close to the water.
+
+When she did so she heard the plash of oars--rhythmical, steady, and
+surely very near. For a moment she listened. Then a sort of panic
+seized her. She remembered the incident of the evening, the hidden boat,
+Paolo's assertion that it was waiting near the house, that it had not
+gone. He had said, too, that the unseen rower had begun to row when he
+began to sing, had stopped rowing when he stopped singing. A conviction
+came to her that this same rower as now following her. But why? Who was
+it? She knew nobody on the lake, except Robin. And he--no, it could not
+be Robin.
+
+The ash of the oars became more distinct. Her unreasoning fear
+increased. With the mystical attention of the great and hidden mind was
+now blent a crude human attention. She began to feel really terrified,
+and, seizing her oars, she pulled frantically towards the middle of the
+lake.
+
+"Viola!"
+
+Out of the darkness it came.
+
+"Viola!"
+
+She stopped and began to tremble. Who--what--could be calling her by
+name, here, in the night? She heard the sound of oars plainly now. Then
+she saw a thing like a black shadow. It was the prow of an advancing
+boat. She sat quite still, with her hands on the oars. The boat came on
+till she could see the figure of one man in it, standing up, and rowing,
+as the Italian boatmen do when they are alone, with his face set towards
+the prow. A few strong strokes and it was beside her, and she was
+looking into Rupert Carey's eyes.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXI
+
+SHE sat still without saying anything. It seemed to her as if she were
+on the platform at Manchester House singing the Italian song. Then
+the disfigured face of Carey--disfigured by vice as hers now by the
+accident--had become as nothing to her. She had seen only his eyes. She
+saw only his eyes now. He remained standing up in the faint light with
+the oars in his hands looking at her. Round about them tinkled the bells
+above the nets.
+
+"You heard me call?" he said at last, almost roughly.
+
+She nodded.
+
+"How did you--?" she began, and stopped.
+
+"I was there this evening when you came in. I heard your boy singing. I
+was under the shadow of the woods."
+
+"Why?"
+
+All this time she was gazing into Carey's eyes, and had not seen in them
+that he was looking, for the first time, at her altered face. She did
+not realise this. She did not remember that her face was altered. The
+expression in his eyes made her forget it.
+
+"I wanted something of you."
+
+"What?"
+
+He let the oars go, and sat down on the little seat. They were close to
+each other now. The sides of the boats touched. He did not answer her
+question.
+
+"I know I've no business to speak to you," he said. "No business to come
+after you. I know that. But I was always a selfish, violent, headlong
+brute, and it seems I can't change."
+
+"But what do you want with me?"
+
+Suddenly she remembered--put her hands up to her face with a swift
+gesture, then dropped them again. What did it matter now? He was the
+last man who would look upon her in life. And now that she remembered
+her own condition she saw his. She saw the terror of his life in his
+marred features, aged, brutalised by excess. She saw, and was glad for a
+moment, as if she met someone unexpectedly on her side of the stream of
+fate. Let him look upon her. She was looking upon him.
+
+"What do you want?" she repeated.
+
+"I want a saviour," he said, staring always straight at her, and
+speaking without tenderness.
+
+"A saviour!"
+
+For a moment she thought of the Bible, of religion; then of her
+sensation that she had been caught by a torturer who would not let her
+go.
+
+"Have you come to me because you think I can tell you of saviour?" she
+said.
+
+And she began to laugh.
+
+"But don't you see me?" she exclaimed. "Don't you see what I am now?"
+
+Suddenly she felt angry with him because his eyes did not seem to see
+the dreadful change in her appearance.
+
+"Don't you think I want a saviour too?" she exclaimed.
+
+"I don't think about you," he said with a sort of deliberate brutality.
+"I think about myself. Men generally do when they come to women."
+
+"Or go away from them," she said.
+
+She was thinking of Robin then, and Fritz.
+
+"Did you know Robin Pierce was here to-day?" she asked.
+
+"Yes. I saw him leave you."
+
+"You saw--but how long have you been watching?"
+
+"A long time."
+
+"Where do you come from?"
+
+He pointed towards the distant lights behind her and before him.
+
+"Opposite. I was to have stayed with Ulford in Casa Felice. I'm staying
+with him over there."
+
+"With Sir Donald?"
+
+"Yes. He's ill. He wants somebody."
+
+"Sir Donald's afraid of me now," she said, watching him closely. "I told
+him to live with his memory of me. Will he do that?"
+
+"I think he will. Poor old chap! he's had hard knocks. They've made him
+afraid of life."
+
+"Why didn't you keep your memory of me?" she said, with sudden nervous
+anger. "You too? If you hadn't come to-night it would never have been
+destroyed."
+
+Her extreme tension of the nerves impelled her to an exhibition of
+fierce bitterness which she could not control. She remembered how he
+had loved her, with what violence and almost crazy frankness. Why had he
+come? He might have remembered her as she was.
+
+"I hate you for coming," she said, almost under her breath.
+
+"I don't care. I had to come."
+
+"Why? Why?"
+
+"I told you. I want a saviour. I'm down in the pit. I can't get out. You
+can see that for yourself."
+
+"Yes," she answered, "I can see that."
+
+"Give me a hand, Viola, and--you'll make me do something I've never
+done, never been able to do."
+
+"What?" she half whispered.
+
+"Believe there's a God--who cares."
+
+She drew in her breath sharply. Something warm surged through her. It
+was not like fire. It was more like the warmth that comes from a warm
+hand laid on a cold one. It surged through her and went away like a
+travelling flood.
+
+"What are you saying?" she said in a low voice. "You are mad to come
+here to-night, to say this to me to-night."
+
+"No. It's just to-night it had to be said."
+
+Suddenly she resolved to tell him. He was in the pit. So was she. Well,
+the condemned can be frank with one another though all the free have to
+practise subterfuge.
+
+"You don't know," she said, and her voice was quiet now. "You don't know
+why it was mad of you to come to-night. I'll tell you. I've come out
+here and I'm not going back again."
+
+He kept his eyes on hers, but did not speak.
+
+"I'm going to stay out here," she said.
+
+And she let her hand fall over the side of the boat till her fingers
+touched the water.
+
+"No," he said. "You can't do that."
+
+"Yes. I shall do it. I want to hide my face in the water."
+
+"Give me a hand first, Viola."
+
+Again the warmth went through her.
+
+"Nobody else can."
+
+"And you've looked at me!" she said.
+
+There was a profound amazement in her voice.
+
+"It's only when I look at you," he said, "that I know there are stars
+somewhere beyond the pit's mouth."
+
+"When you look at me--now?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"But you are blind then?" she said.
+
+"Or are the others blind?" he asked.
+
+Instinctively, really without knowing what she did, she put up her hand
+to her face, touched it, and no longer felt that it was ugly. For a
+moment it seemed to her that her beauty was restored.
+
+"What do you see?" she asked. "But--but it's so dark here."
+
+"Not too dark to see a helping hand--if there is one," he answered.
+
+And he stretched out his arm into her boat and took her right hand from
+the oar it was holding.
+
+"And there is one," he added.
+
+She felt a hand that loved her hand, and there was no veil over her
+face. How strange that was. How utterly impossible it seemed. Yet it
+was so. No woman can be deceived in the touch of a hand on hers. If it
+loves--she knows.
+
+"What are you going to do, Viola?"
+
+"I don't know."
+
+There was a sound almost of shame, a humble sound, in her voice.
+
+"I can't do anything," she murmured. "You would know that to-morrow, in
+sunlight."
+
+"To-morrow I'll come in sunlight."
+
+"No, no. I shall not be there."
+
+"I shall come."
+
+"Oh!--good-night," she said.
+
+She began to feel extraordinarily, terribly excited. She could not tell
+whether it was an excitement of horror, of joy--what it was. But it
+mounted to her brain and rushed into her heart. It was in her veins like
+an intoxicant, and in her eyes like fire, and thrilled in her nerves
+and beat in her arteries. And it seemed to be an excitement full of
+passionate contradictions. She was at the same time like a woman on a
+throne and a woman in the dust--radiant as one worshipped, bowed as one
+beaten.
+
+"Good-night, good-night," she repeated, scarcely knowing what she said.
+
+Her hand struggled in his hand.
+
+"Viola, if you destroy yourself you destroy two people."
+
+She scarcely heard him speaking.
+
+"D'you understand?"
+
+"No, no. Not to-night. I can't understand anything to-night."
+
+"Then to-morrow."
+
+"Yes, to-morrow-to-morrow."
+
+He would not let go her hand, and now his was arbitrary, the hand of a
+master rather than of a lover.
+
+"You won't dare to murder me," he said.
+
+"Murder--what do you mean?"
+
+He had used the word to arrest her attention, which was wandering almost
+as the attention of a madwoman wanders.
+
+"If you hide your face in the water I shall never see those stars above
+the pit's mouth."
+
+"I can't help it--I can't help anything. It's not my fault, it's not my
+fault."
+
+"It will be your fault. It will be your crime."
+
+"Your hand is driving me mad," she gasped.
+
+She meant it, felt that it was so. He let her go instantly. She began to
+row back towards Casa Felice. And now that mystical attention of which
+she had been conscious, that soul watching the night, her in the night,
+was surely profounder, watched with more intensity as a spectator
+bending down to see a struggle. Never before had she felt as if beyond
+human life there was life compared with which human life was as death.
+And now she told herself that she was mad, that this shock of human
+passion coming suddenly upon her loneliness had harmed her brain, that
+this cry for salvation addressed to one who looked upon herself as
+destroyed had deafened reason within her.
+
+His boat kept up with hers. She did not look at him. Casa Felice came in
+sight. She pulled harder, like a mad creature. Her boat shot under the
+archway into the darkness. Somehow--how, she did not know--she guided it
+to the steps, left it, rushed up the staircase in the dark and came out
+on to the piazza. There she stopped where the waterfall could cast its
+spray upon her face. She stayed till her hair and cheeks and hands were
+wet. Then she went to the balustrade. His boat was below and he was
+looking up. She saw the tragic mask of his face down in the thin mist
+that floated about the water, and now she imagined him in the pit,
+gazing up and seeking those stars in which he still believed though he
+could not see them.
+
+"Go away," she said, not knowing why she said it or if she wished him to
+go, only knowing that she had lost the faculty of self-control and might
+say, do, be anything in that moment.
+
+"I can't bear it."
+
+She did not know what she meant she could not bear.
+
+He made a strange answer. He said:
+
+"If you will go into the house, open the windows and sing to me--the
+last song I heard you sing--I'll go. But to-morrow I'll come and touch
+my helping hand, and after to-morrow, and every day."
+
+"Sing--?" she said vacantly. "To-night!"
+
+"Go into the house. Open the window. I shall hear you."
+
+He spoke almost sternly.
+
+She crossed the piazza slowly. A candle was burning in the hall. She
+took it up and went into the drawing-room, which was in black darkness.
+There was a piano in it, close to a tall window which looked on to the
+lake. She set the candle down on the piano, went to the window, unbarred
+the shutters and threw the window open. Instantly she heard the sound
+of oars as Carey sent his boat towards the water beneath the window. She
+drew back, went again to the piano, sat down, opened it, put her hands
+on the keys. How could she sing? But she must make him go away. While
+he was there she could not think, could not grip herself, could not--She
+struck a chord. The sound of music, the doing of a familiar action,
+had a strange effect upon her. She felt as if she recovered clear
+consciousness after an anaesthetic. She struck another chord. What did
+he want? The concert--that song. Her fingers found the prelude, her lips
+the poetry, her voice the music. And then suddenly her heart found
+the meaning, more than the meaning, the eternal meanings of the things
+unutterable, the things that lie beyond the world in the deep souls of
+the women who are the saviours of men.
+
+When she had finished she went to the window. He was still standing in
+the boat and looking up, with the whiteness of the mist about him.
+
+"When you sing I can see those stars," he said. "Do you understand?"
+
+She bent down.
+
+"I don't know--I don't think I understand anything," she whispered.
+"But--I'll try--I'll try to live."
+
+Her voice was so faint, such an inward voice, that it seemed impossible
+he could have heard it. But he struck the oars at once into the water
+and sent the boat out into the shadows of the night.
+
+And she stood there looking into the white silence, which was broken
+only by the faint voices of the fishermen's bells, and said to herself
+again and again, like a wondering child:
+
+"There must be a God, there must be; a God who cares!"
+
+
+
+EPILOGUE
+
+IN London during the ensuing winter people warmly discussed, and many of
+them warmly condemned, a certain Italian episode, in which a woman and
+a man, once well-known and, in their very different ways, widely popular
+in Society, were the actors.
+
+In the deep autumn Sir Donald Ulford had died rather suddenly, and it
+was found in his will that he had left his newly-acquired property, Casa
+Felice, to Lady Holme, who--as everybody had long ago discovered--was
+already living there in strict retirement, while her husband was amusing
+himself in various Continental towns. This legacy was considered by a
+great number of persons to be "a very strange one;" but it was not this
+which caused the gossip now flitting from boudoir to boudoir and from
+club to club.
+
+It had become known that Rupert Carey, whose unfortunate vice had been
+common talk ever since the Arkell House ball, was a perpetual visitor to
+Casa Felice, and presently it was whispered that he was actually living
+there with Lady Holme, and that Lord Holme was going to apply to the
+Courts for a divorce. Thereupon many successful ladies began to wag
+bitter tongues. It seemed to be generally agreed that the affair was
+rendered peculiarly disgraceful by the fact that Lady Holme was no
+longer a beautiful woman. If she had still been lovely they could have
+understood it! The wildest rumours as to the terrible result of the
+accident upon her had been afloat, and already she had become almost
+a legend. It was stated that when poor Lord Holme had first seen her,
+after the operation, the shock had nearly turned his brain. And now it
+was argued that the only decent thing for a woman in such a plight to
+do was to preserve at least her dignity, and to retire modestly from
+the fray in which she could no longer hope to hold her own. That she had
+indeed retired, but apparently with a man, roused much pious scorn and
+pinched regret in those whose lives were passed amid the crash of broken
+commandments.
+
+One day, at a tea, a certain lady, animadverted strongly upon Lady
+Holme's conduct, and finally remarked:
+
+"It's grotesque! A woman who is disfigured, and a man who is, or at any
+rate was, a drunkard! Really it's the most disgusting thing I ever heard
+of!"
+
+Lady Cardington happened to be in the room and she suddenly flushed.
+
+"I don't think we know very much about it," she said, and her voice was
+rather louder than usual.
+
+"But Lord Holme is going to--" began the lady who had been speaking.
+
+"He may be, and he may succeed. But my sympathies are not with him. He
+left his wife when she needed him."
+
+"But what could he have done for her?"
+
+"He could have loved her," said Lady Cardington.
+
+The flush glowed hotter in the face that was generally as white as
+ivory.
+
+There was a moment of silence in the room. Then Lady Cardington, getting
+up to go, added:
+
+"Whatever happens, I shall admire Mr. Carey as long as I live, and I
+wish there were many more men like him in the world."
+
+She went out, leaving a tense astonishment behind her.
+
+Her romantic heart, still young and ardent, though often aching with
+sorrow, and always yearning for the ideal love that it had never found,
+had divined the truth these chattering women had not imagination enough
+to conceive of, soul enough to appreciate if they had conceived of it.
+
+In that Italian winter, far away from London, a very beautiful drama
+of human life was being enacted, not the less but the more beautiful
+because the man and woman who took part in it had been scourged by fate,
+had suffered cruel losses, were in the eyes of many who had known them
+well pariahs--Rupert Carey through his fault, Lady Holme through her
+misfortune.
+
+Long ago, at the Arkell House ball, Lady Holme had said to Robin
+Pierce that if Rupert Carey had the chance she could imagine him doing
+something great. The chance was given him now of doing one of the
+greatest things a human being can do--of winning a soul that is in
+despair back to hope, of winning a heart that is sceptical of love back
+to belief in love. It was a great thing to do, and Carey set about doing
+it in a strange way. He cast himself down in his degradation at the feet
+of this woman whom he was resolved to help, and he said, "Help me!" He
+came to this woman who was on the brink of self-destruction and he said,
+"Teach me to live!"
+
+It was a strange way he took, but perhaps he was right--perhaps it
+was the only way. The words he spoke at midnight on the lake were as
+nothing. His eyes, his acts in sunlight the next day, and day after day,
+were everything. He forced Viola to realise that she was indeed the only
+woman who could save him from the vice he had become the slave of, lift
+him up out of that pit in which he could not see the stars. At first she
+could not believe it, or could believe it only in moments of exaltation.
+Lord Holme and Robin Pierce had rendered her terrified of life and of
+herself in life. She was inclined to cringe before all humanity like a
+beaten dog. There were moments, many moments at first, when she cringed
+before Rupert Carey. But his eyes always told her the same story. They
+never saw the marred face, but always the white angel. The soul in them
+clung to that, asked to be protected by that. And so, at last, the white
+angel--one hides somewhere surely in every woman--was released.
+
+There were sad, horrible moments in this drama of the Italian winter.
+The lonely house in the woods was a witness to painful, even tragic,
+scenes. Viola's love for Rupert Carey was reluctant in its dawning
+and he could not rise at once, or easily, out of the pit into the full
+starlight to which he aspired. After the death of Sir Donald, when the
+winter set in, he asked her to let him live in the house on the opposite
+side of the piazza from the house in which she dwelt. They were people
+of the world, and knew what the world might say, but they were also
+human beings in distress, and they felt as if they had passed into a
+region in which the meaning of the world's voices was lost, as the cry
+of an angry child is lost in the vastness of the desert. She agreed to
+his request, and they lived thus, innocently, till the winter was over
+and the spring came to bring to Italy its radiance once more.
+
+Even the spring was not an idyll. Rupert Carey had struggled upward,
+but Viola, too, had much to forget and very much to learn. The egoist,
+spoken of by Carey himself one night in Half Moon Street, was slow to
+fade in the growing radiance that played about the angel's feet. But
+it knew, and Carey knew also, that it was no longer fine enough in
+its brilliant selfishness to stand quite alone. With the death of the
+physical beauty there came a modesty of heart. With the understanding,
+bitter and terrible as it was, that the great, conquering outward thing
+was destroyed, came the desire, the imperious need, to find and to
+develop if possible the inner things which, perhaps, conquer less
+easily, but which retain their conquests to the end. There was growth in
+Casa Felice, slow but stubborn, growth in the secret places of the soul,
+till there came a time when not merely the white angel, but the whole
+woman, angel and that which had perhaps been devil too, was able to
+accept the yoke laid upon her with patience, was able to say, "I can
+endure it bravely."
+
+Lord Holme presently took his case to the Courts. It was undefended and
+he won it. Not long ago Viola Holme became Viola Carey.
+
+When Robin Pierce heard of it in Rome he sat for a long time in deep
+thought. Even now, even after all that had passed, he felt a thrill of
+pain that was like the pain of jealousy. He wished for the impossible,
+he wished that he had been born with his friend's nature; that, instead
+of the man who could only talk of being, he were the man who could be.
+And yet, in the past, he had sometimes surely defended Viola against
+Carey's seeming condemnation! He had defended and not loved--but Carey
+had judged and loved.
+
+Carey had judged and loved, yet Carey had said he did not believe in a
+God. Robin wondered if he believed now.
+
+Robin was in Rome, and could not hear the words of a man and a woman who
+were sitting one night, after the marriage, upon a piazza above the Lake
+of Como.
+
+The man said:
+
+"Do you remember Robin's '_Danseuse de Tunisie_'?"
+
+"The woman with the fan?"
+
+"Yes. I see her now without the fan. With it she was a siren, perhaps,
+but without it she is--"
+
+"What is she without it?"
+
+"Eternal woman. Ah, how much better than the siren!"
+
+There was a silence filled only by the voice of the waterfall between
+the cypresses. Then the woman spoke, rather softly.
+
+"You taught her what she could be without the fan. You have done the
+great thing."
+
+"And do you know what you have done?"
+
+"I?"
+
+"Yes. You have taught me to see the stars and to feel the soul beyond
+the stars."
+
+"No, it was not I."
+
+Again there was a silence. Then the man said:
+
+"No, thank God--it was not you."
+
+
+
+
+
+End of Project Gutenberg's The Woman With The Fan, by Robert Hichens
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