“But I ought to,” she found herself saying.
These reflections Violet’s advent had interrupted.
“What are you going to do?” the lady was asking.
Leilah, unfit at the moment for battle, felt unable to tell. She looked away.
“Nothing, I suppose.”
Violet, cocking a belligerent eye, threw out:
“You carry moderation to excess.”
Leilah looked up. “What would you have me do?”
“Divorce Barouffski.”
“Because he threw champagne about? I hardly fancy I could get a divorce for that.”
Militantly Violet whipped off a glove. “Frankly that creature is a criminal. Never, in all my life, have I seen such an exhibition of bad taste. But then, as they say here, bad taste leads to crime—to such vulgar forms of it at that.”
“Even so, I don’t see how it helps me.”
“But he struck you,” Violet, more bellicose than ever, exclaimed. “You told me so. What more would you have. But aren’t you difficile today!” Suspiciously she considered her friend. “You’ve got something up your sleeve.”
“If I have,” Leilah, in an effort to parry the thrust, replied, “at least it is not witnesses.”
Cogently Violet nodded. “Come to me then. Divorce is the mother-in-law of invention. If you haven’t any witnesses, I’ll find something else. I make a specialty of finding things before they are lost.”
This programme hardly suited Leilah’s book. Again she parried. “Last night—and what a night!—I dreamed I was feasting with the dead. It was so peaceful. It is that that I want. It is peace the very fibres of my being crave.”
Here were heights—or depths—where Violet could not follow. With a smile she tacked.
“Before you dreamed your dream I noticed that you wore a very ducky frock.”
“It is stained. So am I. The champagne Barouffski threw stained me within and without.”
Here were other heights. Readily Violet skirted them.
“I believe I got a drop or two myself. But then I don’t mind. It is true I am not a theosophist.”
At this, in indignation at herself, Leilah protested.
“Theosophy is primarily a school of good manners. In giving d’Arcy my glass, mine were detestable.”
Now they were on surer ground. Wickedly Violet winked.
“Nobody has any manners anymore or, when they do, they have them in plenty and all of them bad.”
“If I have an excuse,” Leilah continued, “it is that Gulian drove me nearly demented.”
Now, Violet felt, they were getting at it. Mentally she girded herself and with an engaging appearance of sympathy, exclaimed:
“A man never does that unless he loves a woman to distraction.”
The sympathy, however feigned, did its work. After all, Leilah reflected, why should she not tell what she was about to do? On the impulse she turned.
“Violet, I offered Barouffski half my fortune to free me. His reply was a blow. Apart from that I have no grounds for a divorce, none at least which I can show. Previously there was something between Gulian and me. It has gone. He cares for me still and I care for him. Shortly he is to be here. For a long time I hesitated. But after last night—after the nights and days that preceded it!—it does not seem to me that I need hesitate any more.”
Pausing, she drew breath. “Violet, when he comes I am to go with him. Is there a reason why I should not?”
Violet, who had long suspected as much, now at last had nailed it. Cautiously she buckled to.
“No. Not one. On the contrary. There is every reason why you should. Every reason. Particularly as to greet you there will be the disdainful eyes, the lifted skirts, the averted heads, every one of the very slight and very fiendish tortures that are visited on the woman who has gone and done it.”
For a second she too paused, then with a war whoop added:
“But you can’t do anything of the kind. I won’t let you.”
“Would you turn from me also?”
“I! Merciful fathers! But I am not the world. No matter what is done in private, the world does not care. The world is very well bred. It never sees anything that was not intended for it. But on the open scandal of scandalous conduct instantly it turns its well bred back. It will turn it on you.”
Indifferently Leilah assented. She had examined this phase of the matter. It had not seemed very important.
“No doubt,” she replied. “Yet then destiny seldom closes a door without opening another. I told you of my dream. It was a dream of peace. Here there can be none. It may be my karma perhaps. But this,” she continued, motioning at the brilliant room, “this is my prison.”
She hesitated and a bit lamely concluded:
“It is horrible to be in such a place.”
“And worse to be nowhere at all,” Violet shot at her. In firing she had sat up. Now, lolling back on the cushions, she enigmatically resumed: “You may be right though. I daresay it is dreadful to be in prison. I daresay it is even worse than you think.”
Enigmatic still, she smiled. With another shot, with two at most, Leilah, she told herself, would be routed.
“It is as though I were in a vortex,” the latter was saying. “It is as though I were being torn from places where I do not wish to be to others I may not like. But can one argue with a vortex? It is idle even
