“He may play again,” said Violet. “I want to talk to you. Let us go into the next room.”
As Verplank rose at her bidding, others who had been seated, rose also. Interrupted conversations were more animatedly resumed. A servant announced additional names. The first salon now was thronged. The second was filled. Verplank and Violet passed on.
Beyond was a gallery. At the entrance stood a woman, her face averted, talking to a man. As the others approached, she turned.
At sight of her and of the man, Violet would have turned also. It was too late.
“Leilah!” Verplank exclaimed.
For a second, in tragic silence, two beings whom love had joined and fate had separated, stood, staring into each other’s eyes.
For a second only. At once the man interposed himself between them.
“Monsieur!” he insolently threw out. “My name is Barouffski.”
With superior tact Lady Silverstairs intervened. “Good evening, Count. It never occurred to us that we were interrupting a tête-à-tête.”
She paused. Hostilely the two men were measuring each other. In Verplank’s face there was a threat, in Barouffski’s there was a jeer, in Leilah’s there was an expression of absolute terror. Of the little group Violet alone appeared at ease.
“Leilah,” she added, “don’t forget that you are to have luncheon with me tomorrow. Good night, my dear. Silverstairs and I will be going soon. Good night, Barouffski.”
She smiled, nodded, took Verplank’s arm, took him away. But the arm beneath her hand was shaking and she realised that it shook with rage.
Sympathetically she looked up at him. “I thought they were in the other room and it was just to avoid a thing of this sort that I got you out of it. You won’t do anything, will you?”
Verplank now had got control of himself, his arm no longer shook, and it was the smile of a man of the world, the smile of one to whom nothing is important and much absurd, that he answered:
“Why, yes; it was very civil of this chap to introduce himself. I shall leave a card on him. Hello! Here’s Silverstairs! I wonder if he will introduce himself, too.”
The young earl was advancing, his hand outstretched. “I say! I saw a man marching off with the missis, but I had no idea it was you. Where are you stopping? Will you dine with us Tuesday?”
“Yes, do.” Violet threw in. “Rue François Premier at eight.”
“I shall be very glad to,” Verplank answered. He turned to Silverstairs. “I am at the Ritz. Stop by there tomorrow noon, won’t you, and let me take you somewhere for luncheon?”
Lady Silverstairs laughed and employing a darkyism, said: “You don’t say turkey to me. There!” she exclaimed as Verplank was about to protest. “I could not anyway.”
From the salon beyond came a woman’s voice, clear and rich, rendering, in a lascive contralto, a song of love and passion.
The Silverstairs and Verplank approached. Meanwhile, from the diva’s mouth, notes darted like serpents on fire. In mounting fervour the aria developed, trailing, as it climbed, words such as amore, speranza, morir. A breath of brutality passed. The atmosphere became charged with emanations in which the perfume of women mingled with the desires of men. Still the aria mounted, it coloured the air, projecting, like a magic lantern, visions of delight, imperial and archaic, that ascended in glittering scales.
Verplank, detaching himself from the Silverstairs, felt his dumb rage renewed. At the moment he conceived an insane idea of going below, waiting without until Barouffski and Leilah appeared and he saw himself, confronting the man, tearing the woman from him, carrying her off and making her his own.
The impulse fell from him. The rage that he felt at the man deflected into rage at this woman who had made his life a vacant house and for what, good God! And why?
In a cascade of flowers and flames the song was ending. There was new applause, the discreet approbation of worldly people, easily pleased, as easily bored and with but one sure creed: Not too much of anything.
Verplank must also have had enough. When presently the Silverstairs looked about for him he had gone.
Already Violet had summarised the situation to her lord. Now, perplexed at Verplank’s abrupt disappearance, she said:
“You don’t suppose that anything will happen, do you?”
Silverstairs, bored by the entertainment, anxious only to get away where he could have a quiet drink, tugged at his moustache and with unconscious reminiscence answered:
“I don’t know and I don’t care. I don’t care what happens as long as it doesn’t happen to me.”
V
“There are too many of us,” Verplank, the day following, found himself saying to Silverstairs.
The two men were lunching at Voisin’s.
The charming resort which, since the passing of Véry, of Véfour and the Maison Dorée, has become the ultimate refuge of the high gastronomic muse of Savarin and of Brisse was, on this forenoon, filled with its usual clientele:—old men with pink cheeks, young women with ravishing hats, cosmopolitan sportsmen, ladies of both worlds, assortments of what Paris calls High Life and pronounces Hig Leaf.
Without, a fog draped the windows, blurred the movement of the street, transforming it into a cinematograph of misty silhouettes. But within, the brilliant damask, the glittering service, the studied excellence of everything, produced an atmosphere of wealth and ease.
Silverstairs, after swallowing a glass of Chablis, meditatively lit a cigar. But meditation was not his forte. The twentieth of his name, he was tall and robust. He had straw-coloured hair, blue eyes, a skin of brick, and an appearance of simple placidity. At the moment he was mentally fondling certain reminiscences of the Isis and certain bouts with bargees there.
“You know,” he said at last, “if I were you I would just march up to him
