And as he twirled it Eden seemed to recover from her stupor. To her face, which had been blanched, the color returned. In her eyes came a gleam as from a reflection caught from without. Her lips moved, and she glanced from accuser to accused. And as she glanced, dumb and ineffectual of speech, Mr. Menemon crossed the room.
“What is it you say?” he asked.
It was evident at once that of the scene—which if long in the telling had in reality not outlasted a moment—he had stood as witness.
“What is it you say?” he repeated.
“I say that this man is a bigamist.” And as Maule spoke he tossed his head as though inviting possible contradiction. “I say,” he continued, “that Mr. John Usselex has a wife living in Paris.”
Mr. Menemon smoothed the back of his head reflectively. “Dear me!” he said; “that may all be. I daresay there are hundreds of John Usselexes. You don’t expect them to remain bachelors because one of their namesake gets married, do you?” And with that he nodded and turned with a smile to his daughter. “He can’t expect that, Eden, can he?”
But Eden’s eyes were fixed on Usselex. Her attention was wholly centered in him. Seemingly her father’s words were unheeded. And the old gentleman turned again to Maule.
“What evidence have you that this John Usselex is the John Usselex of whom you speak?” he asked; and with the hand with which he had smoothed the back of his head, he now began to caress his chin.
But before Maule could answer, Eden caught her father by the arm. “His face!” she whispered quickly. “You can see it in his face.” She pointed to him; in her eyes was conviction, and in her voice no tremor of doubt. “Look at him,” she cried; “it is he.”
Usselex turned to her in a manner which to those present was uninterpretable, then his eyes sought Mr. Menemon’s, and finally he lowered them to the ground. His attitude was tantamount to admission, and as such Eden construed it.
“Thank God!” she exclaimed. “O God! I thank you. I am free.” She still clutched her father’s arm, and Maule made a movement toward her.
“Yes,” he said, as he did so, “yes, Miss Menemon—”
But before he could reach her, Usselex barred the way. “By what right, sir—” he began, very firmly, but Eden interrupted him.
“I told you once that I thought Miss Bolten was interested in him. Let me tell you now he is in love with me.”
“Eden, Eden—” her father murmured, reprovingly. Into Usselex’ face came an expression that a demon might have envied. For a second he fronted Maule, his hand clenched. Then the fingers loosened again. The demon was transformed into a quiet, self-possessed man, that looked like a monk, a trifle valetudinarian at that.
“Madam,” he said, “when a woman speaks in that way to the man whose name she bears, there is but one thing for him to do, and that is to withdraw.” He bowed, and without further comment left the room.
“I don’t bear your name,” Eden called after him, but he had gone. “I don’t bear your name; I throw it to the mud from which it sprang.”
“And you are right, Miss Menemon,” Maule echoed. “You are right to do so.” And again he moved to her.
“Don’t touch me,” the girl cried; she was trembling. Evidently the excitement had been too much for her. “Don’t touch me,” she repeated; and drawing from him as from a distasteful thing, she added, with a look of scorn that an insulted princess might have exhibited: “Though you have not a lackey’s livery, you have a lackey’s heart.”
“Eden, I beg of you—” Mr. Menemon began. But the girl had turned her back, and divining the uselessness of any admonition, the old gentleman addressed himself to Maule. “You will permit me to say, sir,” he continued, “that whatever your motive may have been, and whatever evidence you may have, your announcement might have been conveyed a trifle less unceremoniously. I bid you good afternoon.”
“But—”
“I bid you good afternoon.”
Maule twirled his moustache for a second, and then, with a glance at Eden, he too left the room.
Hardly had he gone, when Eden threw herself on a lounge. In her ears was the roar of water displaced. The flooring turned from red to black. Then all was still; she had fainted.
XI
As Eden, through thunderclaps, and zigzagged flames of light, groped back to consciousness again, it was with the intuition that some calamity was waiting to greet her. Into the depths of her being, a voice which refused to be hushed had been whispering, “Come.” And Eden, clinging to the fringes of night, strove to still the call. But the phantom of things that were persisted and overcame her; it loomed abruptly, with arms outstretched, forcing her against her will, to reason with that in which no reason was.
For the moment she was benumbed, outwearied with effort and enervated by the strain and depletion of force. She wished herself unconscious again, and looked back into the absence of sentiency from which she had issued, as a pilgrim reentering the desert may recall the groves of Mekka and the silence of the Khabian tomb. It had been less a swoon to her than a foretaste of peace, the antithesis of life compressed into a second; and she longed for a repetition of the sudden suffocation of its embrace. But memory had got its baton back, and the incidents of the hour trooped before her gaze. She could not be free of them; they beat
