“I’ll tell you what I see, Venice. I’ve seen it before, and so I recognise it—”
“But I don’t want to hear about your fancy friends! I want to talk about myself.”
“The matter is, Venice, that any woman in love with a reserved man will pass her spare time in ascribing stormy villainies to his secret nature, whereas generally the poor devil is—”
“Stormy villainies,” said Venice quietly, “is good.”
“Women,” I said largely, cursing myself, “are always making themselves miserable about what they don’t see in a man, as though what they did see wasn’t quite enough.”
The full dry lips ravaged the cigarette for a while. Then they said thoughtfully: “The other night we were dining at Fay Avalon’s, just a very few of us, and when someone said that Mrs. Storm was a nymphomaniac Napier went as white as death—”
“And what did the other guests do, Venice? It’s the least Napier could have done, as she’s an old friend of his.”
“Of course,” said Venice very calmly, looking into her cup as though for more coffee. “I don’t know her, or anything about her, except just what people say. And I’d never have known that Naps even knew her if I hadn’t seen him speak to her that night at the Loyalty. That was the night her brother died, wasn’t it? Napier had never mentioned her name before—nor since, if it comes to that, until last night, when he seemed so upset about her that after a while I upped and said he could go and take a room at the nursing-home if he liked—”
“Wasn’t that rather harsh, Venice? After all, he’s known her a very long time, and it upsets anyone to see an old friend very ill.”
“Oh, I know, I know!” she said eagerly. “You mustn’t think I was jealous, but I suppose it just got on my nerves a bit, seeing that he’d never spoken about her before. And that’s why, you see,” she showed all her very white teeth in an utterly insincere smile. “I’m rather wretched about this idea of not having any children. Do listen, please listen! Oh, why is everyone so tiresome! I’m not talking about Mrs. Storm now, but about the Mrs. Storms of life. You see, they’ve got a lot more to give a chap than anyone like me has—I mean to say, they know how to bring everything out of a man, how to make him a lover and all that—a real lover, I mean, a fire-and-ice, pits-and-mountains, sunlight-and-shadows, nice-and-nasty sort of lover, whereas people like Napier and me are just the same with each other as millions of other people, the men being pretty good duds at loving and the women even worse duds at being loved, if you see what I mean. Oh, I know! A man might be a just come-here-girl-oh-darling lover with one woman and then be a marvellous lover with another, just because, you see, she’d know how to make him be. Of course, with their experience. …”
I sat there in that deep armchair, subdued by the thought of the awful helplessness of men and women to understand one another, and of the terrible thing it would be for some of them if ever they did understand one another, and how many opportunities the devil is always being given of making plunder out of decent people. Here was Venice groping blindly in the corridors of her love, looking for the one golden key which she couldn’t find among the treasures there displayed. For there were treasures there. Venice was quite certain, marvellously certain she was, that Napier loved her as much as he could ever love anyone. Oh, but her love was quite big enough to cope with that nonsense of Napier’s! And, since the love of a good woman for a man is a compliment to all men, maybe I looked at her with understanding, for she gave me a sudden sharp smile, and said, quite calmly: “And so, you see, if I don’t have a baby soon I’ll bust.”
“Darling, darling, darling!” a low voice mocked behind us so that we started, and there above our deep chairs stood Napier, and I remember how he gave me one quick clear look, not in the least a conspiratorial look, but just a clear look, as though the last time he had seen me we had both faced a great danger; and between two men there can be no bond so faint and yet so binding as that which is forged of an understanding which is unmentionable between them; you may not like the bond, as I most sincerely did not like it, for it was Venice who was my friend, but there it is, a bond of invisible wire that cuts at the wrists of the mind.
Napier looked composed, but always the fever lurked in the dark eyes, always the dark eyes looked as though they were suffering from what neither you nor he could tell. That greyhound, sensitive and doubtful and poised … for flight! And he somehow looked queerly festive in that sombre, conventional hall, with his faded I Zingari tie and the brown Shetland waistcoat which was for the most part unbuttoned.
“Oh, Naps, such a wonder!” cried Venice on the instant, and I saw what one is so apt to see after an intimate talk with a woman, that one has only been talking to a mood. Venice was in an instant as I had always seen her with Napier, impetuous, imperious, gay. “What do you think, Naps! I have got a car, a lovely car, swift and shining, and a man called Hebblethwaite for chauffeur. Now what do you think of that?”
“I think,” said Napier gravely, smiling at me, “that it must be an English car. And what do you intend doing about it? Driving in the Bois? What?”
“Driving
