On reaching it, he turned the knob. The door was unlocked, it opened at his touch, and, precisely as on the night before, he saw the rich orange of her pillowed head, but saw too, beside her, Malakoff.
For a second only. Enveloped momentarily, yet, for the moment, enveloped absolutely by the catastrophic emotions of a whirlwind of nightmares, before he could move, the door, slammed in his face, was bolted.
In the instant concussion, the anchylosis of the anterior shock fell by, replaced immediately by blood madness.
Behind that door a man and a woman were occupied in continuing to be. Of that alone he was conscious. Over all the cells of his brain a somnolence had fallen, over all, save one, and that one cell, vehemently active, was inciting him to tear with bare hands life from the man, that done, to tear it again from the woman.
But for the door he could and would have.
Violently he flung himself against it. Violently yet vainly, and before perhaps it were possible for him to have realised the futility of the effort, he did realise that someone was near him, somebody who had a hand on his arm and who was offensively interfering.
Savagely he turned. Before him, in ball dress, a fichu of lace about her head, was Sally.
“Don’t,” she was saying. “Don’t.”
Welden, maniacal still, could have struck her. She saw it. But she did not flinch. Though naturally agitated, she did not seem frightened, surprised merely and also uncertain.
Welden raised his hand with a movement that threatened her, threatened the occupants of that room, menaced the house, Deauville itself, a gesture wide, insane, elemental and human.
“Don’t,” she repeated.
In the constant reiteration of that one word there must have been something of the effect of a spray. The irritability of the one active cell subsided, that of other cells was aroused.
Welden’s arm fell at his side. He stared at Sally. Then, for the first time, one of his two selves recognised her.
Sally, discovering not that, but the altered attitude, faced him.
“He would not be there unless she wished.”
The words fell over him plentifully like water thrown from a bucket. In the full douche and splatter of them, their meaning insinuated itself into the arteries of thought. The man’s two selves, the objective and the subconscious, rejoined each other; mania subsided, somnambulism ceased. Abruptly his entire brain awoke. The potential troglodyte that was in him, as potentially he is in us all, dematerialised. At once a man of the world in flannels and a straw hat found himself in the presence of a lady. That hat he removed.
In the eyes and about the mouth of the lady was an expression which some ladies have when they are occupied less with what they say than with other things which they do not propose to mention.
It was quite the same to Welden. That which occupied him was the ineluctable truth of her statement. Malakoff would not be there if Maud had not consented.
It was in a shrill whisper that Sally had produced it. Now, in the same tone, looking him still in the face, she said:
“Come below with me.”
As she spoke she stooped, gathered the train of her dress and together they descended the stair.
In the hall a footman stood. Sally left Welden and went to the table. Above it in a rack was a letter which she avidly took and put in her corsage. Then, turning, she spoke to the servant.
Welden, meanwhile, was still absorbed by her statement. But happiness was yet so recent that the ineluctable truth had not fully permeated all the cerebral convolutions, and the fact that it had not, manifested itself in the melodramatic phrase which all have uttered, all at least whom the unforeseen has felled.
“It is impossible; I am dreaming!”
At that, instantly, there surged before him the vision of the pillowed head, but now, through some miracle of hell, he could see the body, the fair ivory of it blotched with postules.
Again haematomania would have claimed him. For a moment it was not only the vision that he saw but zigzags of black and scarlet. Determinedly he reacted. Almost immediately the natural poise of the man returned, with it as quickly came the realisation that since already he had done nothing, there was nothing that he or any other civilised being could do, except indeed to leave the house.
At the sure cognition of that he looked about for Sally. She was speaking to a maid.
“I am going,” he told her.
Sally, from over her shoulder, nodded at him.
“So am I,” she answered and went on with her orders.
“Perkins,” she was saying, “M. de Malakoff is in number ten. Tell Harris to have two of the men remain near by until they see him leave it.”
Welden wondered absently at her reply. It was odd, he thought, that she also should be going. Then, as absently, he remembered that she was Malakoff’s wife and he contemplated the fact gravely, without pity. It seemed to him just that besides himself someone else should suffer.
“And Perkins,” Sally called at the now retreating woman. “Bring my jewel case and some things, enough for tonight.”
“Come,” she added to Welden, moving as she spoke to the door. “I am going to Mrs. Cawtree’s. You had better go to the hotel, to the Roches Grises.”
The weather, like themselves, had become dramatic. The high wind that swept the frivolity of the land, came from the sea, perhaps from the Pole. It was strong and rude and, as they issued from the house, it pounced on them, howling and gay as a pack of foxhounds.
Sally’s clothes were lifted and tossed, the fichu was nearly torn from her head. She dominated her dress however, maintained the bit of lace, and, as they went down the path, she called at Welden: “What shall you do tomorrow?”
The “tomorrow” was all he caught. The rest of the question the gale scattered before it reached him. But
