But Leilah did not hear. She was speaking to the surgeon, whom—with a bravery which in itself was a little defiant, and which in any event might have been more discreet—thereafter, daily and openly, she supplied with that which every surgeon wants, a nurse obedient, attentive, skilful, alert, and who, in addition ministers for love.
Presently, Verplank was able to be up. The surgeon said that in a day he would be able to be out. Verplank, who knew as much without being told, asked Leilah to go with him on the morrow.
Leilah refused. Verplank, for an invalid, became then surprisingly demoniac. The demonism of him affected her less than a conception, feminine perhaps but erroneous, of her own selfishness. If she went, she knew beforehand that irremissibly she would be dishonoured. But she knew also that any sense of dishonour must, if it is to ashame, come not from without but from within. If she went, her conscience, she thought, would acquit her. She thought that she would not feel dishonoured, though she knew that she would be disgraced. To refuse on that account seemed to her selfish. As a result finally she consented. Yet in consenting she made one stipulation. Characteristic in itself, it was that there must be nothing clandestine, that he must come for her in the Rue de la Pompe, and that from there, her boxes put on whatever vehicle he brought, they would leave for darkness by daylight.
The plan pleased Verplank. He agreed at once. He told her that he would come the next day.
When he had, she added: “Tonight I go to the Opéra; the Helley-Quetgens have asked me. It is my last look at this world.”
Then, shortly, the arrangements for the evasion completed, she left the hotel.
Without, her motor waited. She told the groom to have it follow her. The air tempted, though the sky was dirty. She thought of the California glare, the eager glitter of New York. She wondered would they go back there. Perhaps, she told herself, we shall at last see Bora-Bora.
Her walk took her through the arcades of the Rue de Rivoli to the fountains of the Place de la Concorde. From there she was about to enter the Champs Élysées when she became conscious of being accosted.
“Chère madame,” someone was saying, “I precipitate myself to renew the expression of my homage.”
D’Arcy, hat in hand, was before her. At once, with a view to what the French agreeably describe as the placing of landmarks—pour poser des jalons—he asked to be permitted to accompany her.
Leilah smiled.
“Not for the world!”
She motioned at the motor. Then, with that graciousness which is natural to the mondaine, with perhaps the desire also to attenuate whatever there were of brusqueness in her reply, she added, as she got in the car:
“I shall be at the Opéra with the Helley-Quetgens tonight. Could you not look in?”
D’Arcy, habituated to the abruptest victories, accustomed to inflame, with but a glance, by the mere exhibition of his Olympian good looks, and, therefore, indifferent when not bored by the celerity of his successes, but piqued by the tranquil air with which this woman had always regarded him, thanked her, assured her that he would not fail to be there, and replaced his hat.
Immediately he raised it again, straight from the head, high in the air. Looking with brilliant eyes from a brilliant brougham, Violet Silverstairs was dashing by.
Coincidentally, unobserved but observant, Barouffski was also passing that way.
Leilah’s motor flew off and she sank back, wondering at herself, wondering rather what influence, malign and unhallowed, could possibly have prompted her to ask this man, whom she disliked as—in spite of a theory to the contrary—honest women do dislike a man of his type. But though, at the time, she could not understand what impelled her, later it seemed to her that it must have been fate.
Barouffski had a different interpretation. At the Joyeuses he had seen Leilah and d’Arcy together. Now, here they were again. The circumstance, of which the fortuitousness was unknown to him, irritated him for that very cause. But he could imagine and did. At once it was clear to him that the brute was after the blue eyes of her bankbook. The deduction, however erroneous, was easy. He was viewing the matter, not, as he fancied, from d’Arcy’s standpoint, but from his own. In spite of which, or rather precisely on that account, he told himself that d’Arcy was a damned scoundrel. The humour of this quite escaped him. But that perhaps was in the order of things.
Since the night at the Joyeuses, he had been measuring himself solely against Verplank. Twice he had failed with him, but he knew that soon they would be at each other again and for the next bout he had in view a coup which, he felt, would do for him definitely. Meanwhile, if in regard to Leilah he had been led into certain vivacities, he felt that with time, which is the great emollient, her memory of these vivacities would pass. Even otherwise, the law was with him. He proposed to see to it that she was also—she and with her her purse. The one menace to both had been Verplank. Here, now, apparently, was another. Here was d’Arcy with his pseudo-Pheidian air, that famous yet false appearance of a young and dissolute Olympian which made imbeciles turn and stare. Ragingly Barouffski reflected that canaille though d’Arcy were, he carried a great many guns, almost as many as Verplank, who, worse luck, had, in addition, the signal advantage of being Leilah’s first love—that love to which it is said one always returns.
But even as he sounded the stupidity of that aphorism, vaguely, for a dim second, he intercepted a gleam refracted from truth. The danger with which he had to contend, Verplank did not personify or d’Arcy either, it was himself. When the golden six was tossed him, had he but then
