“No, Maurice!” said Hilary sharply. “Keep to this world.”
Cold as stones were Iris’s eyes on Sir Maurice. She hated him beyond words or looks. “Don’t let’s talk of hell, Maurice,” she whispered. “It would shock even you if I were to tell you how much I know about it. I am leaving hell behind at last. And do you know, Maurice, that hell looks at me with your face? But I am leaving it behind now.”
“Listen, Iris. Just this one question.” Those clever, darting eyes were curiously, strangely kind. I could not understand Sir Maurice. It was as though he loved, feared, hated, indulged, Iris. He waved the black ebony paper-knife at her. “Now I am a man of the world, Iris. Unlike Napier, as you know. And what sort of a woman are you? Tell me that. I have known many bad women. I have liked some. I have liked you, Iris. You know that. But this isn’t badness. Damn it, girl, this is evil! There aren’t any words in English to describe what we think of a woman who comes wantonly between a man and his wife, a man and his career. I’m not saying anything of your having come between Napier and me. He looked at me this morning as though he hated me. But leave me out. You are smashing a man’s career and you have stolen a man from his wife. What sort of a woman are you, Iris? Tell us that.”
“Maurice!” And Iris smiled, and those very white teeth bit the moment into two pieces with their smile and dropped the pieces into limbo. “You are a baby sometimes, Maurice. You never dream of asking a woman ‘what sort of a woman are you?’ so long as she keeps to the laws made by men. But the first time you see a woman being a woman, you are surprised.”
“But what we don’t understand,” Guy murmured amiably, “is how you’ve come by an entirely different set of ideas from ours. I mean … well, ideas about loyalty and treachery and things like that. You see, Iris, we’ve suddenly found today that we simply don’t begin to understand you. Isn’t that so, Hilary? I mean, we just don’t seem to think in the same sickening language.”
“Exactly,” Sir Maurice rapped out, with the black ebony paper-knife. “That’s it exactly, Iris. You see, this isn’t just your business and Napier’s business. This concerns us. This stabs at the roots of our life, Iris. But you and I don’t seem to think in the same language. I think in English.”
Iris whispered, with eyes of stone: “Unfortunately, I think in English, too. …”
“Oh, come, Iris!” Guy murmured.
“If she didn’t think in English,” I said, “would she be here?”
Sir Maurice started. I was surprised, too.
“That’s true,” said he. “Quite true, boy. Yes.” And he smiled. I wished he wouldn’t smile.
“In that case,” Guy murmured, “all I can say is, Iris, that yours must be a very odd dialect of English. I mean, in yours there doesn’t seem to be any distinction between words which—well, they mean rather a lot to us. We’ve never even learned how to spell most of them, they’re so inevitably part of our lives, or should be. I’m not sure to this day if there’s an s in decency. One’s born knowing them. …”
“Guy, I’ve had twelve years’ unhappiness. You talk to me of those words we are born knowing. I have had twelve years’ unhappiness through not being able to forget those words.”
“Unhappiness!” Sir Maurice rapped out. “Oh, come, child! You seem to have done exactly as you pleased all these years. I’m not saying you haven’t had bad luck—we’re all sorry about that. But if you have been unhappy can you blame anyone but yourself?”
Iris’s face was very stern as she looked at Sir Maurice. I could not have thought that a beautiful woman could look so stern. And she made not one gesture of womanhood. She could have made but one, and asserted her right to live according to her womanhood. But that would have seemed to her to be playing not fair. She must meet men on their own ground always, always, and she must keep herself on their own ground without showing the effort she made. She would advantage herself neither with her womanhood nor her beauty. She seemed
