These people diverted me. On one occasion another person did also. This was a neighbor of mine, Madame de Trèfle, a prophetess much frequented by the superselect, whose apartment adjoined my own. A bagatelle of the door favoring, I made her acquaintance, as a result of which a sitting ensued, one that took place in a room furnished in cornflower and silver, filled with costly futilities, and which, like my library, overlooked the Elysian Fields. There, this lady, a tall, dark creature, dressed capriciously in champagne, yet with a face which in repose was strangely noble, looked me graciously over, closed her eyes and, apparently, fell asleep.
“Ah!” she presently exclaimed. “Your home is a city of pineapple cupolas covered with colors, a city in which the people wear painted gauze. But no. I am foolish. That is not your home; it is the home of your thoughts; yet there in the wide, white streets over which chariots roll, always you are looking for someone whom you do not see. No, you do not see her there, but here, in Paris, you will see her soon, and then—”
Madame de Trèfle gave a little convulsive start, opened her eyes, smiled and added: “The fee is fifty francs. You may pay my secretary at the door.”
It was worth it, though of the prophecy part I did not believe a word. In spite of which, or perhaps precisely on that account, the very next day, on the Champs Élysées, I ran into Kate. She and her mother had just come over, and pending Herbert’s arrival, were stopping at a hotel nearby. At tea that afternoon I told them about Madame de Trèfle, or as much, at least, as I judged advisable, and Kate, properly astounded, asked me to take her to her. I promised to do so, but before I could, all of a sudden this thing occurred; or rather and more exactly, one evening, a little later, when I was dressing, abruptly Herbert appeared.
I knew he was looked for that day, but his irruption in my rooms surprised me. By whomsoever else he may have been expected, it was certainly not by me. But I am, I hope, always civil, and, interrupting the tying of my tie to shake hands, I threw out: “Good trip?”
He dodged it, and with laughing eyes threw back: “You remember Jenny Price?”
In the mirror before me I nodded at him.
“She was on the ship. We have made it up.”
I turned on him. “What about Kate?”
Running his long, thin fingers through his thick hair, he gave me a queer little look. “That’s it. You’ll have to explain.”
I had finished with my tie and was putting on my coat, but at the outrageousness of that, I stopped.
“I’ll see you hanged first!”
From a gold case he got out a cigarette, and coolly offered me another. As he did so I looked him over. It is the misfortune of a historian that he is obliged to live the lives of other people, to participate in their vices and virtues—when they have any—and, at the moment, I realized that it is impossible for a man to get himself more into what is vulgarly termed a fix than in becoming engaged to two girls. But I realized also that the penalties for a polite felony of this kind are those which the conscience alone creates, and, as for conscience, I felt that Herbert had about as much as a weasel.
Then immediately I thought of Kate. I could fancy Joy bidding her farewell, Misery offering its arm, I could see her abrupt migration from noon into night. Yet, oddly enough, the picture evoked, instead of inciting me to assault, presented vistas which in some unaccountable manner restrained. I am surely not a hypocrite, and it annoyed me that they should.
At once, with a jerk, I got into my coat, and turning again on the brute, angrily I flung at him:
“It is a surgical operation you are asking me to perform.”
At the charge, his eyes lost none of their laughter. On the contrary, airily he retorted: “Yes, and you are just the chap to know how.”
He had been seated. Now springingly he stood up, looking as he did so quite as though he were dumping on the floor—and on me—any and every care.
At that I could indeed have kicked him. But my servant entered. In a moment Herbert had caught up his hat and gone.
I had planned that evening to dine out and then look in at the Opéra. The mood now for either excursion fell by. I told the servant to fetch whatever was easiest, a bit of chicken, a leaf or two of lettuce; and presently, these things consumed, I sat, an unlighted cigar between my teeth, considering in what manner without anodynes, without narcotics, without mortification morbus setting in, I could safely operate on Kate. Yet from no matter what angle I viewed it, the task of cutting into her the fact that the man of all others was not the man for her, and of cutting it, moreover, without making her wince, resolved itself into a high necromantic feat for which I entirely lacked the art. None the less, it had to be done. But how?
In this dilemma I lost myself until ultimately there surged the gleam of a plan of a falsehood shop, one which I would open and fill with mendacities so spacious and splendid that they would both assuage and console. Only—and here was the hitch—try as I might, I
