A servant had entered the room, bearing a letter on a tray.
“A letter for you, sir,” he said.
Usselex took the note, opened the envelope, which he tossed on the table, and possessed himself of the contents.
“Is the messenger waiting?” he asked.
“Yes, sir.”
“Very good. Say I will be there immediately.”
The man bowed and left the room.
“I am sorry, Eden—”
“What is it?”
“Nothing of any moment—a matter of business to which I must attend.” He glanced at the clock. “It is after ten,” he added. “You will not want to leave for Delmonico’s before half-past eleven, will you? Very good; I will be back long before then.” He had risen from his seat, and now he bent over and took her hand in his. “I am sorry I have to go. It is so seldom we have an evening together. And I had counted on this.”
Eden raised a finger warningly. “If you are not back in time,” she said, “I will send for Arnswald and go with him.”
“I can trust him with you,” he answered, and left the room. In a moment he returned, hat in hand. “By the way, Eden, I forgot to ask—you have sent out cards, have you not?”
“Yes, the world is informed that Mrs. John Usselex is at home on Saturdays.”
“Would you mind sending that announcement to someone whom you don’t know? It’s just for the civility of the thing.”
“Certainly. Who is it?”
“A Mrs. Feverill.”
“Feverill? Mrs. Feverill.” Eden contracted her eyebrows. “Where have I heard that name before?”
“I don’t think you have ever heard it.”
Eden laughed. “She wears blue velvet, I am sure; but I will send the card. Where does she live?”
Usselex bent over and touched her forehead with his lips. “That is good of you,” he said. “She will take it very kindly.” And with that he moved to the door.
“But what is the address?” Eden called after him.
“The Ranleigh,” he answered; and from the hall he added, in a louder tone, “I will be back in less than an hour.”
“The Ranleigh,” she repeated to herself. “The Ranleigh!” And then suddenly the wall of the room parted like a curtain; to her ears came a cry of violins, dominated and accentuated by a blare of brass. Mrs. Manhattan was at her elbow. Behind her was Jones; beneath was a woman, her face turned to hers. She caught the motion of Mrs. Manhattan’s fan. Beyond, in a canvas forest, stood a man, open-mouthed, raising and lowering his right arm at regular intervals. And between the shiver of violins and the shudder of trumpets, she heard someone saying, “Mrs. Feverill, that is—rather fly. Stops at the Ranleigh.” At once the music swooned. The opera-house dissolved into mist, and Eden was in a carriage, eying through the open window the cut of a passer’s gown. In her lap were some flowers; she raised them to her face, and as she put them down again, a cab drove past, bearing her husband and the woman who was considered fly. And this was the woman he wished her to receive! She caught and pinioned her forehead in her hands. In the distance the shadow of the afternoon loomed again, but this time more monstrous and potent than before. And nearer and nearer it came—blacker than hate and more appalling than shame; in a moment it would be on her; she would be shrouded in it forevermore, and no defense—not one.
“No, no,” she murmured. Her hands left her forehead. She clutched her throat as though to tear some invisible grasp away. “No, no,” she murmured, “it cannot be.”
“Look at me, Eden,” someone was saying; “look at me; I love your eyes. Youth is inconstant. It is with age—”
It was her husband reassuring her even in his absence. “Speak to me; I love your voice.” And memory, continuing its office of mercy, served as aegis and exorcised advancing night. In her nervousness at the parried attack, she left her seat and paced the room, the opals glittering on her waist. “But he told me,” she mused, “he told me that the woman’s husband was in trouble—that he was endeavoring to aid them both. What did I hear when I first met him? There was a clerk or someone in his office, a man whom
