Slowly she returned to the house and went to her room. There, when at last the servants had gone and she was alone, she knelt on a prie-dieu and, to the Watchers of the Seven Spheres, prayed for the earthly peace of her soul and of his. She knew that no prayer could affect them, she knew that they are not to be propitiated or coerced, but it soothed her as prayer, in raising the vibrations, does soothe the distressed. The prayer concluded she began another. She prayed that sometime she might be somewhere, on some plane, where all things broken are made complete and found again things vanished.
Then, the solace of it still upon her, suddenly she saw by what the prayer had been induced. The consciousness confused and presently, in the melancholy sotto-voce of thought, she told herself that to extinguish that desire, she would have to be in Dharmakaya—the mystic state where there is oblivion of all things here.
“Here!” she caught herself repeating. For, at once, a passage from the Upanishads prompting, she remembered that here means Myalba, which is hell, the greatest of all hells and, for those of this evolution, the only hell there is.
VII
It was on the morning succeeding these incidents that Leilah felt unequal for the appointments she had made. But however she felt, she always did what she had planned. In this instance nature punished her. On the way to the first appointment, a malaise overtook her, enveloped her, beat at her and although, gradually, it fell by, she was still conscious of it when, in the Rue Cambon, the motor stopped at the modiste’s door.
“The fitting of madame la comtesse Barouffska!” a fair young girl in black immediately and authoritatively announced.
Before landscapes of silk, in the delight of new modes, customers were sunning themselves. At the announcement they turned, while Leilah, conducted by another girl who had advanced to meet her, crossed the laboratory of enchantments and entered an adjoining room.
But, for the moment, the fitting was delayed. The première was elsewhere occupied. When presently she appeared she excitedly exclaimed:
“I hope I have not detained madame. I am desolated if I have. But! But! If madame knew! One is literally torn to pieces! All day long it is nothing but Ernestine that dress! Ernestine, that robe! Ernestine, that costume! Ernestine this! Ernestine that! Truly madame, there are moments when I say I die! I go crazy!”
Abruptly dropping her voice, she added: “But pardon, I monologue.”
At once, indicating a gown which an assistant had brought, she exclaimed again:
“It will ravishingly become madame.”
The gown, a work of the best Parisian art, suggested something of the immateriality of a moonbeam, and as the assistant, a girl with a tired face and circled eyes, held it for inspection, it gleamed.
Leilah looked at it, wondering the while where she would wear it, whether indeed she would wear it at all. Then, before a sheet that had been placed on the floor and on which the assistant arranged the gown in a circle she proceeded to undress.
To the amateur in feminine beauty, there are few spectacles more attractive than that of an attractive woman clothed in lingerie and a hat. This spectacle Leilah presented.
The première exclaimed at it. “Madame la comtesse has a figure truly divine. But! But! Who could have laced her?”
“I was not very well this morning,” Leilah replied. “I told my women not to make me too tight. But you can take me in I think about an inch.”
“Marguerite,” said the première, “draw the stays a little closer.”
The girl with the tired face undid the corset and pulled at the strings. But she pulled awkwardly, perhaps too suddenly.
Leilah gasped, turned, sat down and fell forward. The première hurried to her. She had fainted.
“The smelling salts!” the première cried. “The smelling salts! Cognac! Get some cognac!”
With one hand she was supporting Leilah, with the other she gesticulated at Marguerite who, hurriedly from the mantel, fetched a vinaigrette which Ernestine then took and sniffed at.
“She’s coming to,” said the assistant.
Ernestine waved the vinaigrette. “The gods be praised!”
For Leilah now had opened her eyes. Wearily she looked about, straightened herself and sighed.
“I must have fainted.”
“It is nothing madame,” Ernestine anxiously protested. “Truly nothing and yet so modish. Yesterday the Princesse de Solférino fainted. The day before it was the turn of the young Duchesse de Malakoff. Such a good augury for these ladies! Like them madame is perhaps—”
But Leilah now was making an effort to rise.
Abandoning the vinaigrette Ernestine aided her.
“Madame will perhaps wish the fitting postponed. Yes, is it not? It might further fatigue madame. Tomorrow—no, tomorrow I regret but in the afternoon I have three appointments and in the morning there is the trousseau of Miss Smith of New York who is to marry an English lord. Marguerite!” she interrupted herself to exclaim. “The costume of madame!”
Then, as the assistant also assisted Leilah, reflectively the première resumed:
“I hear that every New York young lady loves a lord. But—”
She hesitated. Visibly the vision evoked, confused. Yet, after a second’s pause, rallying, she continued.
“Perhaps it is not every New York young lady who has a lord to love. Perhaps many of them love the same lord.”
Discreetly she smiled. “And that must be so nice for him!”
Considering Leilah, she concluded:
“But another
