Short Fiction

as an intrusion. Moreover, the reason of it was beyond him. Then from being a phenomenon objectionable and occult, it became a phase of his condition, one that primarily he accepted from sheer inability to avoid and finally from the familiarising effects of habit. It is related that men who entered the Bastille as though it were their grave, had to be afterward ejected by force. They had got used to it and what human beings get used to they get to like. That was the case with Welden. In accounting for Sally’s visits he forgot her former ambuscades and attributed present attentions to the effort he had made to rid the world of Malakoff. Anyway, what did it matter? Sally made his prison endurable. She was blithe as a humming bird. On the end of her fingers was every kind of pretty gesture. They were alert too, very divinatory. They knew what he wanted as soon as he did. They omitted to be in the way. They grew discreet. Recognising their usefulness, they ceased to flutter. They took themselves away, and away remained, until their return was solicited.

When that occurred Sally, even to the world, could no longer affect to be a miserable woman. She radiated smiles, she exhaled good humour. Dr. Binet-Valmer, who thoroughly approved of the presence of young gentlewomen in the bedrooms of convalescents, encouraged her visits. He knew she was only an insect but he realised that she was a pretty one. Without any faith in drugs whatever, with hardly any faith in anything, he yet had confidence in the tonic of prettiness, smiles and good humour. The infirmières had too. The intendant had also. To them, to the trainers and stablemen, Sally was the right sort. There was no end to her presents and pourboires.

Such were her occupations. In addition she had another. She, too, was having a run.

The post was a good bit off. Between her and it were wide ditches and tall fences. At any moment a tremendous crumpler might occur. But behind her were other obstacles, bigger and wider still, timber which she thought she could not take and which she had cleared without effort. Moreover, now she was nearing the home stretch. Provided she kept her seat, kept, too, a hand light, yet steady, luck might land her a winner, and at it she went, full tilt, straight ahead, at a pace so clinking that it accounted perhaps for her smiles and good humour.

It was not because of these radiations, but because of others, because it was his destiny to do so, that Welden no longer resented her presence. He accepted it, but with that curious lassitude which Death, in revenge it may be, puts on those for whom it has come and not got.

Apathetic and indifferent, he rejected the news of the day, ignored the cataclysms in Wall Street, refused to see Cantire, Le Hillel, Lord Ferrers and the string of visitors that called. But apart from the apathy, apart, too, from the debility incident to his condition, health had returned. Long since his collarbone had been mended and his ankle, treated after the setting to massage instead of plaster, was now but a little stiff.

Presently, Sally prompting, these things he recognised and recognising also that further delay would constitute a breach of hospitality, he wrote de Dol his thanks, asked him as an additional obligation to accept his hunter and, after distributing princely presents to the service, had himself transported to the Sign of the Swan.

“What you need,” Sally said to him that evening, “is a good, long sea trip. Dr. Binet-Valmer told me so. Don’t you agree with him?”

They were at table in her sitting room at the Hôtel du Cygne where, served by Harris, they had dined. The cloth had not yet been removed but Harris had gone. Sally wore a gown in the corsage of which ochre and lilac were blended. Welden’s evening coat fell about him loosely. He was smoking.

“Don’t you?” Sally repeated.

“Yes,” he answered. “But hardly alone and for the moment I know no one whom I could ask to go with me.”

Sally smiled, displaying her teeth, bits of mother of pearl, glistening and pointed.

“You could ask me.”

At this prelude to the Invitation à la valse, Welden shrugged his shoulders. Men generally thought Sally very fetching. Her mauve eyes, oblique and half-closed, might have tempted saints, demons even, with whom she was perhaps akin. But she failed to represent to Welden that which makes some men constant not necessarily to one particular woman but to one particular feminine type.

“Nonsense,” he told her.

“It is not nonsense at all,” Sally, shaking her head and cocking an eye at him, retorted. “Why do you say so?”

Welden considered the prelude closer. After all there was a certain worldly justice in it. Maud having taken up with Malakoff, it was perhaps nonsense for him to balk at taking up with Malakoff’s wife. Jointly and severally they could combine for the payment of old scores. At the same time, between public and private payment, there was a margin.

“Why do you?” Sally repeated.

Welden lighted a fresh cigar. “I should be compromising you irretrievably.”

Sally sighed. “You have already,” she promptly answered.

From over the cigar Welden looked at her. About her throat was a string of pearls. One hand that lay invitingly on the table was covered with gems. But from it the pretty gestures had gone, from her face the smiles had passed. She looked virginal and sad, a sort of melancholy angel, only much better dressed than angels usually are. Through her half-closed eyes she watched him. There had been her visits to de Dol’s, he was thinking, but that was her affair.

“In what way?” he asked.

“Well, you see, don’t you know, everybody says the duel was on my account.”

That also Welden considered. It seemed logical enough. On a certain night Sally had abandoned her husband. Within thirty-six hours he and that husband had fought. Their reasons for