“I am an old married woman,” added the lady who was not twenty-two. “But if I were not, if for instance I were like you, free, independent and not a fright, and I had to choose between love and matrimony, it would not take me a moment to decide. Not one.”
Leilah put down her cup. “Of course it would not. If you had it to do again you would marry Silverstairs and you would marry for love. That is over for me, over forever.”
Narrowly, out of a corner of an eye, Violet considered her. “He was such a brute, was he?”
“Who? Gulian, do you mean?”
“I suppose so. There has been no other, has there?”
“Violet!”
It was at this juncture, for the fiftieth time, that Lady Silverstairs exclaimed:
“It is downright mean of you to keep me in the dark. What was it that happened? Make a soiled breast of it. Do!”
For the fiftieth time Leilah protested:
“Don’t ask me. Don’t. He knows and that is enough. As for me I am trying to forget.”
“And you think Barouffski will help you. But has it ever occurred to you that if you were not very rich he might lack the incentive?”
To this Leilah assented. “He said he is poor.”
“At least he does not exaggerate. I told Silverstairs that he was after you for your money and he said that was what he married me for. So he did and I married him for his title. It was a fair bargain. Now if we had it to do over I would say—I would say—well, I would say that it is better to have loved your husband than never to have loved at all. But six months hence, if you had it to do over, do you think you could say as much—or as little?”
“At least I could say that I did not marry for a title.”
“Well, hardly, particularly a Polish one, though I daresay even that might be useful in the servants’ hall. But what could you say you married for? It isn’t love?”
“No.”
“Nor position?”
“No.”
“Then what on earth—”
“Violet, how hard you make it for me. Can’t you see that if I do, it will be for protection?”
“For protection! Merciful fathers! You talk like a chorus girl! Protection against what? Against whom? Verplank?”
“No.” Leilah choking down something in her throat, replied: “Against myself.”
“I don’t understand you,” said Violet slowly. But she did or thought she did, and that night told Silverstairs that Leilah was still in love with her ex.
It was in these circumstances that Leilah listened to the Count Kasimiérz Barouffski, who, in telling her that he was poor, omitted to add that he had resources. These were women and cards. It is a business like another. But even to his nearest friends, to Tyszkiewicz, a compatriot, and Palencia, a Corsican, he did not boast of it. He had therefore some sense of shame, but not of honour, though with humour he was supplied. A man with some sense of humour and no sense of honour may go far. Barouffski intended to. After his volcanic introduction to Leilah, he beheld in her not the woman but the opportunity which chance had sent his way. To grasp that he displayed every art of which the Slav is capable. He did more. He impressed her not with the nobility of his name but of his nature. He was a good actor and though at first unsuccessful he was not discouraged. It was an axiom of his that among the dice of destiny there is always a golden six. It was axiomatic with him also that it is not tossed at once. To deserve it, one must wait. Barouffski waited. Presently fate shook the box before him. The golden six was his.
But not the box.
To Leilah the mere idea of matrimony was abhorrent. Yet she could not stop indefinitely with the Silverstairs. She had no relatives with whom she could reside. She felt that it would be awkward and perhaps equivocal for her to have an establishment of her own. But these considerations were minor beside another—a sense, haunting and constant, that the excursion to Nevada had been inadequate, that the past needed a surer barricade.
It was not a husband that she wanted. Peace and security were the fleshpots that she craved. These Barouffski offered or seemed to—and it was these finally and these only that she agreed to accept.
To the implied stipulation Barouffski consented with an air of high chivalry but also with an ambiguous smile. Given the golden six of her income, the box was a detail to him, and it was in these circumstances that over the perhaps insecurely locked door of her past, this mask mounted guard.
The news of the engagement, filtering through the press, was cabled to the States, together with the fact that Leilah was then stopping in the Rue François Premier with Lady Silverstairs, whose portrait, in addition to bogus presentments of the engaged couple, were printed in the minor sheets that circulate from New York to San Francisco.
On arriving from Australia at the latter city, Verplank happened on a belated copy. Since he had gone from Coronado, this, the first news of his wife, was her engagement to another man.
In his amazement his thoughts stuttered. Into his mind entered stretches of night. He looked at the sheet without seeing it. But the paragraph and the purport of it, already photographed on the films of the brain, were prompting him unconsciously, and it was without really knowing what he was saying that he exclaimed:
“Leilah! My wife! In Paris! Engaged to another man!”
The names, the words, the meaning of them all, beat on his brain like blows of a hammer.
“Leilah! My wife! In Paris! Engaged!”
Again he looked at the sheet. “What a damned lie!” he ragingly cried, and, rumpling the paper, threw it from him.
But now, the names, the words, the meaning of them all, well beaten into him, readjusted themselves, presenting a picture perfectly defined and possibly
