“Of course,” Violet, in her bell-like voice, threw out, “after running away, getting a divorce and marrying another man, I can fancy that you don’t much want to see him. But, really, you owe it to yourself to give the reason, particularly as it is he who is to blame.”
At this, Leilah, who had been looking down into her prison, looked up. “I never said so.”
“No, but was it necessary? Even nowadays, even in the States, a woman does not cut and run because butter won’t melt in her husband’s mouth. She does so because she has, or thinks she has, a grievance and the man, if he is a man, ought to be given an opportunity to apologise, however imaginary the grievance may be.”
Leilah shook her head. “There can be no apology here.”
Violet laughed. “That is just what I would say if I had gone and done it. Then it would be for Silverstairs to try on his knees to get me to listen to one—provided, of course, that in the interim I had not taken over another man, for in that case I verily believe he would wring my neck. But you need fear nothing of the sort from Verplank. He seemed anxious only to wring Barouffski’s.”
Leilah made another futile effort with her fork. Absently she answered:
“I don’t believe he knew who he was.”
“You don’t! After his telling him! But, apropos, what became of d’Arcy? I thought you and he were safely tucked away in a corner, otherwise never in the world would I have marched your Number One up to your Number Two.”
“D’Arcy!” Leilah repeated. She had barely heard. She scarcely knew what she was saying, still less what was being said.
“Yes, le beau d’Arcy. Marie de Fresnoy told me that the other day at the races he was about to pay a ragamuffin of a girl for a flower, when she said: ‘I’d rather you kissed me.’ Fancy that! She told me too that a man who had a husband’s reasons for wanting to kill him, was afraid to say a word. It appears he is a dead shot. But it appears also that your lovely Barouffski is one of the best swordsmen here. Verplank had better look out. To return though to our Chablis Moutonne. What will you do?”
Leilah, her thoughts afar, made no reply.
“What will you do?” Violet repeated.
From afar the question floated, descended, trod among the tender places of Leilah’s soul. At the pain of it she winced. “God help me, I do not know.”
Violet, cocking an eye again, insinuated: “Let me take a hand.” She paused, then, for clincher, threw out: “He dines here tomorrow.”
“Here!” Leilah exclaimed, half rising, fearful now that at any moment he might appear. “Here! With you?”
Violet nodded. “Why yes. Why not? If I can’t confess you, perhaps I can him. At any rate I can try. You can’t blame me for wanting to, either. You abandoned him on your honeymoon. You won’t tell me why and he says he don’t know. But he must suspect. He must have concluded that you left him for this, that or the other. I want to find out what his this, that and the other are and then make my own selection. It is true he did say that it was because of Barouffski. But that’s all gammon. You never saw Barouffski until you got here. There is something else and what that is I want to find out. No, you can’t blame me. It is the instinct of self-preservation. If I don’t get at the bottom of it soon, I shall simply go mad.”
A laugh, clear and musical, wound up the lady’s chatter. She had no more idea of going mad than she had of jumping out of the window. But she wanted to know and that was only human.
But now, Leilah, who a moment before had half risen, stood up. “Violet, I am not well, you must let me go. Yes,” she added as the lady remarked that on the morrow she might appear in the Rue de la Pompe. “Yes, yes.”
She would have said yes to anything. Hurriedly she got away.
Without the motor waited.
“Home,” she told the groom.
A little before she had thought herself the most miserable of beings. But however deep the hell, there is always a deeper one. Add uncertainty to distress and the sum of it is sorrow multiplied by the infinite. That hell, that sorrow was or seemed to be, hers. She did not know where to go, what to do, to whom to turn.
The pitiable plan of flight returned to her. Again she put it aside. She could not adopt it now. Besides, though she owed a duty to herself, she owed another to Verplank. In what manner he had failed to receive the letter, it was impossible for her to imagine, but the fact that he had not received it, hurt her doubly, hurt her for herself, hurt her for him. Had it reached him, both would have been spared this pass. But it had not reached him and since then what must he have thought of her? What!
The query, which kept repeating itself, tortured her and on that torture was superposed the precarious problem of his enlightenment. See him she could not. To write was beyond her ability. For there are things no pen should write as there are others no tongue should tell. None the less the truth she knew must reach him and would do so best, she thought, through some channel similar to that from which the letter had proceeded, from a source either indifferent or inimical to them both.
At the autosuggestion, her thoughts fluttered, scattered, grouped, then suddenly regrouping, produced a name. Beneath her breath she uttered it.
“Barouffski!”
It was not in provision of this that she had married him. At the time no such possibility had even impossibly loomed. But she had married him precisely as she had obtained a divorce,
