With a rush, then, the attack began.
“That’s because you don’t know. You think you are sane and sound. Don’t you now? Yes, and you are neither. You have a high temperature complicated with nausea. The temperature is due to exposure, the nausea to indigestion. You have been exposed to Verplank and you have supped on Barouffski. You fancy you can’t be rid of the incubus. That is an hallucination which the fever has caused. You can be rid of it. You can throw it up. I have an emetic that will do the trick. It may not be tasty but I’ll warrant it will make him gag far more than you.”
At the ferocity of the assault, Leilah quailed. “Really, Violet, your language—”
But the lady was not to be denied. “Aha! You want me to be butterfingered, don’t you? Not a bit of it. You shall have the dose whether you like it or not and here it is for you. You called this place a prison. Now who runs it? You do. And on what? Your money. Supposing you hadn’t any? Would Barouffski supply it? He would pack in a jiffy. Couldn’t you then sue for divorce? Of course you could. Then there is the emetic. Verplank has enough for you both, enough for an army. All you have to do is to hold your nose, open your mouth, give your money away and vomit Barouffski. Will you?”
It was Violet’s last shot. With it she had expected to bowl Leilah completely over. Anxiously she looked to see the result.
“Will you?” she repeated.
With manifest exaltation Leilah answered: “I had thought of it.”
Surprisedly Violet stared, wondering could all her ammunition have gone for nothing, wondering too at the almost rapt expression that had come into Leilah’s face.
“What?”
“Yes, Violet, I had thought of it—and of other things also. While Aurelia was here, I was reading a little book. It told me what I once knew and had since forgotten. It told me that if we have ideals we should live for them, that it is only by living for them and suffering for them that we can lift ourselves above the brutes. Violet, it was sinful of me to think of going with Gulian.”
Dispassionately the now mollified lady toned that phrase.
“It was not perhaps quite nice.”
“But I had not seen,” Leilah continued. “No, not that,” she interrupted herself to explain. “I had forgotten that this prison, all I have endured, all I shall endure, these are my debts to the Lords of Karma.”
But that was a bit too strong. Violet laughed.
“You mean the Lords of Gammon.”
“I mean,” Leilah, with heightening fervour, replied, “that I have looked upon my prison as a cross. It is not a cross, it is a boon—one of which I have not been worthy. For I forgot that any sorrow should be welcomed. I forgot that it has been sent to make us nobler than we are. But my sorrows I have not welcomed. I have rebelled against them. I shall rebel no more. They were my masters. They shall be my servants now.”
At these fine sentiments Violet sniffed.
“If that is theosophy I will believe in it when I am old, fat and a German. But I am glad it enabled you to reach a decision. Otherwise—”
But what the lady may have intended to say was never expressed or at least not then. Through the yellow portières, the delicate oval of Aurelia’s face appeared.
“Aren’t you ever coming?” she called. “What have you two been talking about?”
As the ingénue spoke, she entered, strolled to the mirror, considered herself.
“We have been discussing your engagement,” Violet, in a very matter of fact way, replied.
Aurelia adjusted her hat, patted her hair, and addressed the mirror.
“I fancied it must be something important. Did I tell you what happened before I took Farnese?”
Violet yawned. “I have forgotten.”
Aurelia, still pluming herself, smiled.
“Then I didn’t. Besides, it is so shocking.”
Violet motioned at her. “Don’t be tiresome. I may have lost the ability to be shocked but not the ability to be bored.”
With an air of great satisfaction Aurelia turned.
“Well, this morning, d’Arcy called. He told me about the gayeties last evening and it seemed to me that he must have looked so sweet with the champagne all over him that I could hardly resist accepting him, too.”
“Accepting him, three!” Violet exclaimed. She raised her eyes as though calling heaven to witness. “There’s constancy for you!”
Aurelia gave another glance at her enticing self.
“Do you know, I have always thought that constancy must be due either to a lack of imagination or else of opportunity. That is what you would call a moral standpoint, isn’t it? Though what morality itself is you never deigned to explain. Personally I am inclined to think that it must be a preference in a choice of experiences.”
Violet stood up. “One might suppose you thought it consisted in being engaged to half a dozen men at the same time.”
Enthusiastically the girl regarded her. “There! That’s it! You’ve struck it! There is safety in numbers and what a moral young person I am!”
Violet nodded. “I never suspected it before.”
“Nor I,” Aurelia contentedly replied. She looked at Leilah. “Bye-bye.”
“Goodbye,” Violet added.
In a moment both had gone and Leilah, again alone, reopened the little treatise on the Paramitas.
The way was now clear and to that way the pamphlet had pointed. It had done more. It had brought the exaltation which such beatitudes do bring to those in great distress. But though it had exalted, suddenly the fervour fell from her, for at once she foresaw the scene which she would have with Verplank, when now, at the last moment, she had to tell him that she could not go. The terror of it daunted her. She could see him, demanding that she tell him why—that faltering why of hers which would be gibberish to him and yet which summarised her ideals.
For the moment she felt that she lacked the strength
