Then, as she turned, displaying the oval of her perfect face, and stood there, elaborately gowned, her head erect, she might perhaps, to any other, have presented but a genre picture of a society girl, ultra smart. To Welden she was something else, something higher or it may be, lower; a being intensely human, vibrant with elemental passion.
“She was made for me,” he told himself, and crossing the room, he looked her in the eyes.
But however vibrant the girl may have been, however primitive also, she was not in a mood for caresses. Dumbly against him she felt the revolt which women have for the man who comes to them from the arms of another. Those arms were lifeless now and such enfoldings as they had given perhaps were scant, but some at least there had been, and at the thought of them she recoiled instinctively.
“No,” she said in answer to that look. “Not now, perhaps never. I cannot tell. Do not try to ask me.”
“Good night,” she added after a moment, when Welden, who knew better than to urge against her will, had taken up his hat and coat.
II
The Benediction
The fatigues compressed in a journey across the continent are of a completeness that satiates the sturdiest. On leaving Madison Avenue, Welden slept thirteen hours, awoke, tubbed, dressed, drank some coffee, read a telegram, also a newspaper and, other details terminated, drove to the Grand Central where he arranged to repeat the trip.
The telegram, a night message from Santa Barbara, marked Collect and signed Wicks, was as follows:
Perkins indicted on evidence personally obtained. Rings recovered, trial tomorrow. I claim rewards.
“The imbecile,” Welden muttered as the message fell from him.
But the purport of it he found repeated in a morning paper, strung out there with sensational details, stories of full confession, others of priceless jewels—the property of the murdered woman with whom Welden had eloped and then been shot by the outraged husband—the usual farrago of fiction, garnished in this instance with a picture of White Peacocks which resembled the scene of the crime about as closely as it did the Plaza.
Beneath the ribbon of rubbish there was none the less a fact. There was also a possibility. There had been an indictment, conviction might follow.
The rooms which Welden occupied gave on Central Park. For a moment, from a window, he stood looking at the rain of sunshine, the leisurely motors, the gingerly stepping horses, the parade of nurses out with their charges for the midday air. Yet, though he looked, he did not see, or rather it was not the Park that he saw, but Santa Barbara and the obligation to return there.
The prospect was not agreeable. He had, however, contemplated it before. Now, with no thought of shirking, he contemplated it again. Then, the letter written, other details terminated, he went down Madison Avenue for a word with Maud.
But the girl was not at home. William assured him of that, assured him that this time there was no mistake, that she was really out, gone but a little before in her brougham.
Welden took from a pocket the letter which he had written.
“Here is a note for Miss Barhyte. Give it to her yourself and say that it is not to be opened until she hears from me. I leave town today and I will wire shortly, but the letter is not to be opened until then. Do you understand? You do? You are sure you do? The letter is not to be opened until I wire. Very good. Here is something for you.”
“Thank you, Mr. Welden. Thank you.”
The man bowed Welden out, after which he put the letter on the hall table where, later that afternoon, Maud letting herself in with a latchkey as was her custom, found and read it.
Welden then was on his way to Chicago. The press there supplied him with fresh news from Santa Barbara, at Omaha there was more. But thereon, over the plains and through the hamlets which in a sort of horrible coquetry vie in hideousness with each other, there was a silence that continued until Ogden was reached.
Ogden too has its coquetries. But the news of the day may be had there. There is also a stop.
The stop is brief, yet it sufficed for Welden. He wired to Maud, got his trunks from the baggage car, his bags from the Pullman and boarded a returning train.
In a Salt Lake sheet he had read that, the prosecution collapsing, Perkins had been released. It was then that he wired. The wire was a request that his letter should not be opened. Four days later he was in New York.
On the evening of that fourth day, a bit fatigued, the motion of the train actively continuing in his head, but in a white tie, a white waistcoat—between which two small black studs served to indicate his recent mourning—he was again in Madison Avenue, this time in the parlour, as the local drawing room is sometimes called and on this occasion very properly, for a parlour or parloir is a talking place and Welden found himself called upon to say more than he had expected, and on a subject at that concerning which he had not intended to talk at all.
Maud was not present when he entered and he looked at the faded frescoes with a yawn. In a moment however, from the dining-room beyond, the girl appeared.
Her neck and arms were bare. Her gown was white, striated with violet. As she entered she stooped to arrange or to release a fold. The attitude, but momentarily maintained, was so graceful that Welden forgot his fatigue. Then, as she straightened and approached, one hand just upholding a hem, the picture she presented indemnified him for the little horrors of the trip.
The week previous he saw that she had altered. Now he
