“I don’t believe you care a fig what becomes of me!” said Mrs. Huston at length in a reckless way.
He looked at her with a slow grave smile, but made no other answer.
“Do you?” she asked coquettishly.
He was quite grave now, and her breathing became slightly accelerated.
“Yes!” quite simply.
Presently Trist roused himself, as if from unpleasant reflections, and began talking about the future.
“I should like to know,” he said, “exactly what you think of doing, because I have not much time. At any moment Russia may declare war against Turkey, and I shall have to go at once.”
“If Russia declares war, I shall kill myself, I think.”
He laughed, and changed his position, drawing in his feet, and leaning forward with his hands clasped between his knees.
“No,” he said with genial energy, “I would not do that, if I were you. If I may be allowed to make a suggestion, it seems to me that you will do well to come to a distinct understanding with Huston, either through the mediation of Mrs. Wylie or by letter. You cannot go on long like this.”
“What sort of understanding?” she inquired, with that nonchalant impatience of detail which seems to be the special prerogative of beautiful women.
“Ask him to give you three months to think over matters; at the expiration of that time you can have an interview with him, and come to some definite agreement respecting the future.”
She sighed, and leant back wearily, looking at him in a curious, snakelike way beneath her lowered lids.
“Three months will make no difference.”
“Nevertheless … try it.”
“I want,” she said in a dull voice, “… a divorce!”
For a moment a veil seemed to have been lifted from his eyes; all meekness vanished, and the glance was keen, farsighted, almost cruel.
“You cannot get that, Alice. It is impossible!”
She turned her face quite away from him and looked out of the window, jerking the armrest nervously. Her breath clouded the glass. She murmured something inaudible.
“Eh?” he inquired.
“I could make it possible,” she said jerkily, and her voice died away in a sickening little laugh.
For some moments there was a horrible silence, and then Theo Trist spoke in a strange, thick voice, quite unlike his own.
“Alice,” he said, “do you ever think of Brenda? Do you ever think of anyone but yourself?”
The words came as a cold and chilling surprise to Mrs. Huston, and she began slowly to realize that she had met with something which was entirely new to her. She had come in contact with a man upon whom the effect of her beauty was of no account. Her powers of fascination seemed suddenly to have left her, and across her mind there flashed a gleam of that unpleasant light by the aid of which we are at times enabled to see ourselves as others see us. It was only natural and womanlike that she should resent the shedding of this light, and visit her resentment, not upon the disclosure made by it, but on the illuminator of the unpleasant scene.
“Oh,” she muttered angrily, “you are all against me! No one cares for me; no one makes allowances.”
Trist smiled in a slow, strong way which was infinitely pathetic.
“No,” he said, “no one makes allowances; you must never expect that.”
Then Mrs. Huston’s tears began to flow again, and the self-contained man opposite to her sat with white bloodless lips and contracted eyes staring into the blackness of the night.
VIII
Masked
The soirée of the Ancient Artists’ Guild was in the full flow of its success. There had been some excellent music, and the programme promised more. The brilliancy of the attendance was equal to the highest hopes of the most ambitious committee. Long hair and strange dresses vouched for the presence of self-conscious intellect; small receding foreheads, hopeless mouths, and fair but painted faces, announced the presence of that shade of aristocracy which prefers to patronize.
William Hicks was not on the committee of the Ancient Artists, but he moved about from group to group, dispensed ices, and exchanged artistic jargon with a greater grace than was at the command of that entire august body. By some subtle means, peculiarly his own, he managed to convey to many the erroneous idea that he was in some indefinite way connected with the obvious success of this soirée; and several stout ladies went so far as to thank him, later on, for a pleasant evening, which gratitude he graciously and deprecatingly disowned in such a way as to make it appear his due. The pleasant evening had been in most cases spent between a nervous concern as to the effect produced by personal and filial adornment, and an ill-disguised contempt for common women who flaunt titles and diamonds (both uncoveted) in the faces of their superiors, possessing neither. But we men cannot be expected to understand those things.
Chiefly was William Hicks’ devotion laid at Brenda’s feet. For her was reserved his sweetest smile, just tempered with that suggestion of poetic pathos which he knew well how to sprinkle over his mirth. To her ear was retailed the very latest witticism, culled from the brain of some other man, and skilfully reproduced, not as a cutting, but as a modest seedling. To her side he returned most often, and over her chair stooped most markedly.
It has been hinted already that Hicks, with all his talents and mental gifts, was not an observant man. In certain small diplomacies of social life he was no match
