He stooped, gathered the paper, smoothed it, read the account again.
After all, he reflected, it might be that she was in Paris and, if there, it was natural that she would be with Violet Silverstairs. These two items were, therefore, not improbably correct. That view reached, the deduction followed: If they are correct, the other may be. Yet, in that case, he argued, obviously she must think me dead. On the heels of this second deduction an impression trod—the ease and dispatch with which she had become consoled.
Enraged at once, angered already by what he had taken for a lie and then infuriated by what he took for truth, the anterior incidents that had this supreme outrage for climax, leaped at him. At the onslaught the primitive passions flared, and it was with the impulse of the homicide that he determined to seek and overwhelm this woman who accepted men and matters with such entire sans-gêne.
On the morrow he left for New York. Before going he sent a cablegram to the address which the paper had supplied:
Am just apprised of the studied insult of your engagement to some foreign cad. Leaving for Paris at once.
As he signed it, deeply, beneath the breath, he swore. “That will show her,” he added.
It so happened that it showed her nothing. Leilah was not then in the Rue François Premier, but in the Rue de la Pompe, where the message followed, but only to be received by Barouffski, who read it with a curious smile.
Already he hated Verplank, who had not yet acquired a hatred for him. But though that hatred had not been acquired, it developed tumultuously when, on arriving in New York, he learned that not merely the report of the engagement was true, but that the engagement had since resulted in a marriage, which itself had been preceded by a Nevada divorce.
In comparison to all that had occurred, the divorce seemed at the time almost negligible. It was the crowning infamy of this marriage which, in renewing the primitive passions, aroused in Verplank a determination not merely to seek and overwhelm the woman, but to seek and destroy the man. The marriage, he decided could be but the result of an anterior affair, there was no other explanation of it. The idea that had come to him at Coronado, the possibility that she might have left him because informed of some affair of his own and which since then he had examined again and again, fell utterly away. It was not because of errors of his that she had gone, but for turpitudes of her own. Then to his anger at her was added a hatred of Barouffski, whom he had never seen, and who, without having seen Verplank, hated him also, hated him retrospectively and prospectively, hated him because clearly Leilah had been his and—where women are concerned, all things being possible—might be again.
But though Barouffski hated Verplank actively, he hated him vaguely, as one must when one hates the unknown. It was the cablegram which, in supplying the personal element, made the hate concrete.
“Foreign cad, eh?” he repeated, with a curious smile. “Eh bien, nous verrons, we shall see.”
Presently the opportunity occurred. For it was in these circumstances, a fortnight after the receipt of the cablegram, that, directed by the young Baronne de Fresnoy, he turned and saw Verplank entering the room where he stood.
IV
With the unerring instinct of the man of the world, Verplank, on entering the crowded salon, divined immediately, among all the women present, the hostess whom he had never seen.
As he bent over her hand, the duchess, who had not an idea how he came there, said in her fluted voice:
“This is really so nice of you. I did not know you were in Paris.”
“Nor did I—until this moment,” answered Verplank, looking as he spoke into the eyes of his hostess who, after the one imperceptible glance with which the mondaine judges and classifies, was wondering in what manner, this man, with his virile face and impeccable presence, had forced Leilah Barouffska to leave him.
“But,” he added, “Monsieur de Joyeuse whom I saw this afternoon told me that you would be at home, and assured me that I might venture to present my homages.”
The duchess displayed her tireless smile. “I am only sorry not to have had them sooner.” She paused. Between her smile, the edges of her teeth showed, false but beautiful. “There is Lady Silverstairs trying to get you to look at her, and very well worth looking at she is.”
Camille de Joyeuse turned for a moment to the reticent young prince who in his diffident way still lingered at her side.
Beyond, at the farther end of the room, notes rippled. Standing near a grand piano, the Romanian with the flowing hair was preluding a fantasy of his own.
In the hush that succeeded, Verplank moved to where Violet sat.
Smilingly, without speaking, she gave him her hand and indicated a seat beside her. Then, raising a fan, she whispered:
“Demon! What have you done? Where do you spring from? How long have you been in Paris?”
Verplank, seating himself, answered:
“I got here this morning. Why am I a demon?”
From behind the fan, Violet asked:
“What did you do to Leilah? Why did she leave you?”
Verplank folded his gloved hands. “That is what I am here to find out.”
“Do you mean to tell me that you don’t know!”
“I have not an idea—unless it was because of this Count Thingumagig.”
Violet Silverstairs furled her fan, looked at him, looked away, looked about the room. At one end her husband, accompanied by de Joyeuse, Tempest, de Fresnoy, and the others, had entered. At the further end the Romanian dominated. Supported en sourdine by an accompanist, he massed sounds and dispersed them, concentrating fulgurations of notes from which echoing showers fell. Presently, resuming an abandoned measure, he caressed a largo, infinitely sweet, that swooned in the languors of the finale. At
