At the piano, a sheet of music before her, was a girl who, as he entered, turned slowly and slowly arose.
Welden, his hat in his hand, his coat on his arm, looked at her. Unlike the room, she had altered. The allurement of her face, the caress which she had exhaled, the charm of manner which always she had conveyed, these emanations were absent. In place of allurement was blankness; in lieu of the caress was rigidity; instead of the charm, a chill. In her eyes and about her mouth was an expression of distant inquiry, an air of saying: Who are you and what do you want?
Welden, prepared for the situation, began methodically at its demolition.
“Maud, there has been that between us which I know you will come to believe justifies me in disregarding any instructions you may have given, your father’s orders as well. When I returned the sapphire—”
Insecure in her intrenchments the girl let fire. “It was your right to do so. It was a right which I had given you and expressly stipulated that you should use. In returning it you said everything there was to be said. There can be nothing to add to it.”
“When I returned the sapphire,” Welden continued, “it was because I thought you wished it.”
“You may or may not have been mistaken, but you cannot possibly have been as mistaken in me as I have been in you.”
“When I returned the sapphire,” Welden persisted, “it was because I believed I had seen you in Malakoff’s arms.”
For a second, with diligent disdain, the girl considered him. Then at once, after the fashion which royalty has devised to signify that a conversation is at an end, she moved back.
Welden had been prepared for that also.
“Do you recall our last night together?”
At the memory evoked, the girl coloured and the disdain mounting with the flush, increased, accentuated by the wantonness of the question.
“Forgive me for referring to it,” Welden added. “But that night when I entered your room, the disposition of it was such that I saw at first but your head. The next night I saw you as before, with this difference however, Malakoff was with you—with you I say, for it was but recently I learned that that night you were at Frascati’s and that your room was occupied by a Mme. Oppensheim, a person whom I did not know existed.”
On the music stool behind her the girl sank down. The flush had gone from her face but the disdain remained.
“Do you know of her?” Welden asked.
Maud, without unbending, bent a little; “She reached the villa as I was leaving it.”
“Then you are aware of the resemblance between you. Her hair is precisely the colour of yours. Now do me this favour; put yourself in my place. Had you seen me as I thought I saw you, would you not have acted as I did?”
The girl straightened herself. “No,” she answered shortly.
“Do you mean that it would not have affected your relations with me?”
“I mean nothing of the kind.”
“Without indiscretion, may I ask then what you do mean?”
“Because I happened to fancy that you were volage, I myself would not have become so.”
“Forgive me, Maud, I do not quite follow you.”
“Nor can I allow you, nor do I wish to. Admitting your delusion, one by the way which must have been almost self-evident, the slightest effort on your part would have corrected it.”
“Maud, believe me, I had no opportunity.”
“I do believe you, your opportunity lay elsewhere.”
“No,” Welden protested, “it did not. Moreover, the opportunity to which you refer came months later, and though utilised then, it was only for the wretchedest and therefore the most human of reasons, in order that I might at least be revenged.”
“On Malakoff?” the girl tauntingly threw at him.
“Damn me, sir,” someone was angrily calling, “when I instructed my servant to show you the door—”
Welden turned. Before him the general stood. Immediately Maud interposed herself between them.
“Father,” she said, pushing him as she spoke, toward the adjoining room, “go in there, I must speak to you.”
“You told me,” the old man remonstrated, trying vainly to resist. “You told me—”
“I have not a doubt of it,” Maud, pushing still, replied. “But I told you also never to believe a word a woman said.”
The door closed suddenly. Welden could at last put down his hat and coat. He had not, he knew, demolished all the intrenchments, but in view of the girl’s defence of him, he felt that he had sapped their base.
He was quite in error. None the less, in a few moments, when Maud issued unaccompanied from the conflict in the outer room, her parliamentaries there may have suggested a temporary truce. She stopped at the table, took up the book of verse, looked at it, replaced it and with tolerable irrelevance remarked:
“That was very terrible about Sally. Have you any suspicion who did it?”
“No,” Welden answered. “None whatever.”
“I ought, I suppose, to condole with you, but I cannot. Neither of you I think behaved very well. She knew about Mme. Oppensheim even if, as you say, you did not. It was because of her that she got the decree. Everybody knew that. It was not in the papers, but it was common talk. Were you deaf at the time?”
“Partially,” Welden replied. “At Chantilly I made rather a mess of it.”
Of that mess the girl had been informed. At the time and since she had thought it not unmerited. What she did not know and what she never learned was the fact that the mess was intentional. For there are some things that some men do not talk about. Even otherwise, there are times and seasons when any compliment, however unique, falls flat.
“Afterward,” Welden resumed, “it was quite a bit before I was about.”
“But when you were, did you not hear?”
“When I was, Sally told me that it was you
