Leilah wished that she would go, wished too that she would stay, wished rather—as at times we all wish of those who are near us—that she were different, less mondaine perhaps, more simple. To Violet, the spectacle in the garden had been tedious. To Leilah it was horrible. Moreover the atmosphere of blood and hate, the enigma of Verplank’s words, the menaces of Barouffski’s eyes, these things frightened her, inducing a dread which seemed to brood not in the mind but in the body. She could have put a hand to her girdle and have said: “It is here.” In addition she felt—as in every spiritual crisis we all do—alone. Of this she could not tell Violet. She felt that she lacked the power to express it and that Violet lacked the ability to understand. Pain has accents which only its graduates know. Violet, in all her brilliant life, had never shed a poignant tear.
“What do you propose to do now?” the lady was asking.
Cheerlessly Leilah replied: “My duty.”
Here was something which Violet did understand. Brightly she nodded.
“Yes, and I may tell you that it is your duty to preserve your looks and avoid a scandal. I did not at all like your fantasia in the garden. A gentlewoman never does anything important and that was an important thing. In no time it will be all over the place. You can believe that, can’t you?”
“I don’t know what to believe.”
Violet laughed. “I always believe what I like. That I find so satisfactory. Apropos. What was that story about which Verplank was shouting? Mercy! I could have heard him a mile away.”
In weary protest Leilah shook her head. “You know I can’t tell you.”
“The same old thing, was it? But how antiquated you are! Really it is piteous. There are no secrets anymore. All that sort of thing went out with hoopskirts. Private life which used to be a sealed book has become an open newspaper. It is plain for instance, plain to everybody, plain as a pikestaff that you are still in love with Verplank. What you left him for the Lord in his infinite wisdom and mercy only knows. That is a secret certainly but only because you choose to make it one. It is no secret to me though that you are dying to go back to him. But don’t you know you can’t? Don’t you know it? Don’t you know that you can’t budge an inch until you have shipped Barouffski? Now how are you going to do that? Tell me.”
Leilah made a pass with a hand. It was as though, in some rite known but to her, she were consulting the lap of the invisible gods and, in it, the equally invisible future.
“Then I will tell you. You have got to buy him off. Listen to this. I will pack Silverstairs straight to the Embassy. There he will get all the law and most of the prophets. Meanwhile promise that you’ll keep your head.”
“I will try,” Leilah, mechanically, her thoughts afar, replied.
“There!” Violet exclaimed. “That’s right. When there is a divorce in the air it’s so much better to try than to be tried.”
At the inane jest she laughed, embraced her friend. In a moment she had gone, distributing as she went a faint, sweet smell of orris.
Leilah who had risen moved to the window and looked out at the gate through which Verplank would come. It was as she had said: She did not know what to believe and mutely for a moment she prayed for guidance.
“O, Lords of Karma, Watchers of the Seven Spheres, grant me so to live that, hereafter, I may say, I have harmed no heart, I have made no one weep. Out of your infinite bounty grant that somewhere, sometime, there may be peace to Gulian’s soul and mine.”
The prayer concluded she felt securer. Momentarily the cancer of anxiety had ceased to gnaw, the fascination of fear had departed. In the respite she turned to the clock. It was nearly five and she rang for one of her women.
“Parker,” she began, when the servant appeared.
“Yes, my lady.”
“Presently, in a few minutes, a gentleman will come by the gate. Be there and bring him here. Bring him through the dining room and up the back way. If possible, I prefer that no one should see him.”
“Yes, my lady. Thank your ladyship.”
At once, with that air which those acquire who attended to delicate matters, the woman drew aside the tapestry that masked the stair, which then discreetly, almost atiptoe, she descended.
As the tapestry fell again, instantly there returned to Leilah the sense of evil and impending ill. The brilliant room seemed full of terrors. In each bright corner a danger lurked. So strong was the impression that she felt it must be she was being warned, that she was being visited by those obscure phenomena which occultists call impacts from the astral, and that these were urging her to go, to meet Verplank without, in the garden, in the street, anywhere except in this fastidiousness.
Coerced by the impression, she entered an adjoining room, got there a fichu which she put on her head, a light wrap which she drew about her. Excited as she was, unaided as well, it took several minutes before she could find these accouterments. When, at last equipped, she re-entered the sitting room, she started.
Before her, his hat on, one side of his face medallioned with courtplaster, stood Verplank.
At sight of Leilah, he removed his hat which he tossed on the sofa and said at once and simply enough:
“That story of yours is false as Judas.”
“Gulian!” At the moment it was all she found, but then fancy a blind man dazzled.
Verplank nodded. “Yes. The letters you received at Coronado—there were three of them, were there not? three written on gray paper each signed Effingham Verplank?—well, my father wrote them, that’s true enough, but
