"If you weren't so young I should think you were trying to insult me, Conrad. Please don't speak to me any more," she said next morning, when he had made tactless, seventeen-year-old reproaches to her.
Her voice and gaze were cold, as if he were a stranger. She rose and left him. The grace of the slender figure had no mercy in it as he watched. The sun was streaming, and the birds chirped loud, and he thought his heart was broken as he watched. He sat looking the way that she had gone for long after the terrace was bare. And heavy hours passed emptily, and he was still bereft. And it was his last day here.
Half of it was lost when wretchedness waylaid her at a door. "I'm sorry," he gulped. She bent her head, and moved by him without speaking. In the group about the tea-table she was no gentler. The glare of sunshine mellowed. His father claimed him, and talked with unusual earnestness of ambition and of life; his mother wrapt his arm about her waist, and was pathetic and confident by turn. In the chatter of the salon he heard that Mrs. Adaile was going to the dance. From herself he had still no word or look. The flush in the sky faded. A relentless star peered forth. And it was his last day here.
She went. Until the final minutes he could not feel that she would go, could not believe it until he saw her in the triumphant cruelty of her ball gown with the lilies at her dazzling breast—saw her giddily with the long gloves and the fan in her hands.
The room was full of animation, of movement. The boy sat mute, his gaze fastened on her face. The fiacre grated to the curb. Miss McGuire asked her if she was ready. "Yes, I'm ready." Colonel Van Buren put the cape about her shoulders. She turned carelessly, her hand outstretched: "Well, I'll say 'good-bye,' Con; you've all my good wishes." "Good-bye, Mrs. Adaile," he faltered. His eyes implored her, but her touch was fleeting. The fiacre rattled—she had gone.
And upon the hotel fell a profound and deathly silence. He heard nothing. Damp he was, and blind.
He had seen her for the last time. He kept saying it. It seemed unreal—an impossible thing—though the harrowing of it was so actual. His mind wouldn't seize it, even while the weight of it was grinding his youth.
For the last time! Outside, he bit hard upon his nether lip, to check its silly quivering. A myriad stars glittered over Rouen now; a breeze was blowing across the river. There was a roll of wheels approaching. Foolish as he knew the hope to be, he waited strained till they rolled past. At the piano Miss Digby-Smith was playing Ascher's "Alice." His mother joined him, and sat there with him—and scarcely spoke. She took his hand. He thought she didn't guess.
"It's late, Con," she said at last. "Hadn't you better go to bed?"
"I'm not tired," said the boy.
"You'll come to my room as soon as you're dressed in the morning?"
"You won't be able to go to sleep again."
"I want you to. Your father's going to the station with you, do you know?"
"Yes, he told me ... What time"—the indifference of his tone!—"what time do you think Miss McGuire and—er—Mrs. Adaile will be back?"
"Not for hours yet," she said; "I daresay it will be three or four o'clock." She looked away from him. He thought she didn't guess!
Presently the lights were turned out. People said "good-night," and bade him "good-bye." But for very shame he would have sat alone in the salon till it was time for him to start—sat there just to see the woman pass through the hall.
In his bed he listened—he lay in the darkness listening, holding his breath. He wanted to hear her come home; to hear her would be something. The wind was rising, and alternately it tricked and terrorised him; he trembled lest a gust should drown the faint stir of her return. It was a long, long while that he had listened. Sleep pressed upon his eyelids, but he would not yield. Once it was mastering him, and he twitched to wide wakefulness in the guilty fear that he had missed her.
The blustering wind, and the clock of St. Ouen made the only sounds.
He saw the door opening with the dim notion that he was being called too soon. For a mere vague moment, which seemed dishonour to him in the next, he beheld without realising her. He raised himself slowly on his elbows, and it thrilled through him that she was moving to his side.
"I've come to say 'good-bye' to you, Con."
"Mrs. Adaile!" The name was all that he could whisper. "Oh, Mrs. Adaile!"
"I've been horrid to you. Haven't I?"
"No, no," he said strenuously, "it was I; I want to beg your pardon. Forgive me! Oh, you do forgive me, don't you? It's been awful."
Her hands were swift and live; he held them fast. The ghostliness of daybreak was in the room. In the pallor she sat at the edge of the bed, the ball gown wan, and the faded lilies drooping at her breast. Being so young, he was shy that his hair was on end and the collar of his nightshirt crumpled.
"I'm sorry," she said; "I've been sorry all the night."
Her penitence started his tears, and blinking wouldn't keep them back. He wanted to smear them away, but he didn't want to let go her hands. He turned his head. He was ashamed—but less ashamed than he would have expected—that she should see him blub.
"Don't!" she said, and he had never heard that note before. "You'll make me hate myself."
"I love you," he exclaimed, "I love you."
"Sh! You mustn't say that, Con," she murmured.
"I love you, I love you," cried the boy.
"I know," she said, "I know you do."
And, wonderfully, there was nothing wonderful to his mind that he had owned it to her. At the instant there was nothing but perfect peace.
"You've made me so happy," he breathed.
Afterwards that sounded to her a little funny, but as she heard him say it she thought it only strange and beautiful. Something tenderer than liking, something graver came into her gaze as she looked down at him.
"I've not been a nice woman to you, Con," she said. "One day you'll think so."
"I shall never think so," he vowed, "never. I deserved you should punish me."
But that wasn't what she had meant. "You will think so." She nodded. "Only you won't mind then, because you'll laugh at it all."
"You're cruel," he choked. "Because I'm not a man you think I can't love you really. No man could love you better than I do. If I could only tell you what I feel! I'd die for you, I'd do anything for you. Oh, Mrs. Adaile, I shall never see you any more—for God's sake let me kiss you once!"
Quick as her compassion was, the misgiving of a boy was quicker—in the dizzy second that he saw her bending to him he wondered how he ought to hold her. Then her bosom fell upon his breathlessness, and he went to Heaven against her lips.
"I must go," she said, freeing herself.
"Oh, don't," he begged, "not yet."
"I must; I oughtn't to have come up."
"What shall I do?" he groaned. "Oh, it's awful to be leaving you!"
"I wish I hadn't made you fond of me," she sighed.
"You didn't; you couldn't help it. But what shall I do? My life's no good to me; I shall be thinking of you, and longing for you when you've forgotten all about me."
She smoothed the ruffled hair.
"Think of me sometimes when you've got over it," she said; "think of me when you're going to do anything that isn't worthy of you now."
"I shall be true to you as long as I live," said the boy, understanding. "Mrs. Adaile——"
It was odd to her ear that he called her that a moment after she had been in his arms. "What?" she asked.
"When you go down to breakfast,Ishall be in Paris."
"Yes," she said.
"Shall you read the papers by the window this morning?"
"Do you want me to?"
"Yes—I should be able to know where you were."
"I will then."
"I shall be imagining you all the time.... What shall you do this evening?"
"Reproach myself," she said.
"No, you mustn't; what for? Will you think of me?"
"Yes. After dinner I'll go on the terrace, Con, and I'll sit there alone, wondering what you're doing, and thinking of—just now. And—well, perhaps I'll say a little prayer for you. Imustgo now. Say 'good-bye' to me."
"I can't," he gasped, "I can't."
"Con, I must."
"Give me something," he stammered; "give me something you've got on."
She broke off a handful of the flowers they had crushed, and, stooping, took his strained face between her palms, and kissed him twice—once on the lips, and, by impulse, on the brow. Then she opened the door cautiously. She smiled back at him, and stole away into the passage. And in the loneliness she left behind her, the boy lay kissing her lilies, and sobbing with his great despair.
Across twenty years a man made an obeisance to a woman for risking what she had risked that she might comfort a boy's pain. Conrad got up from the club chair and crossed over to the bookcase. He pulled out the Post Office Directory—and it sprawled open on the top shelf. Would he find the name under "A?" ... "Grice Ewart Adaile, M.P., 62 Norfolk Street, Park Lane." And she? Was she alive? could she be there, so close to him as that?
He mourned to think how different she must be to-day. The woman had changed, and the boy had changed, and though he didn't know it, the town had changed the most. The ubiquitous rush and whir of electric trams, the ceaseless clangour of their bells beating through the brain, had turned peace into a pandemonium. Rouen had acquired all the noise of New York without any of its gaiety. Telegraph wires and telephone wires spanned the tops of the churches, and a mesh-work of iron ropes obscured the sky.
He strolled to Norfolk Street the next afternoon. There was a half hope in his mind of finding a carriage at the door waiting to take the lady for her drive. If Mrs. Adaile came out—Oh, if Mrs. Adaile came out he would be well repaid; it would be exciting to recognise her, although she wouldn't recognise him!
But she did not come out. The door was shut fast, and no familiar face happened to gaze pensively over the window boxes. He was disappointed. In the evening he went to another theatre. The hero of the comedy was supposed to be a man of his own age, and talked about himself as if he were a centenarian. He said he was thirty-seven and had "lived his life," and he called the heroine "Child." His hair was silvered at the temples, and he depressed Conrad exceedingly.
The situation of Norfolk Street was so convenient, however, that Conrad took to passing through it rather often. And though he was old enough to know better, he certainly looked young enough to be the hero's son. One day he found the windows of No. 62 blank behind shutters. So the family had left town! He sauntered on, and hesitated, and went back. Here was an opportunity to ascertain what he wanted to know. He rang the bell, and asked a solemn functionary when Mrs. Adaile was expected home.
"I can't say, sir," said the man; "Mrs. Adaile is on the Continent."
"Oh," said Conrad, with a heart-prank. She did live! He vacillated—and obeyed a second impulse; "Can you give me Mrs. Adaile's address?"
The solemn person noted the pearl in the stranger's tie, the silk lining of the coat he unbuttoned, and the direction in which his hand was travelling. Mrs. Adaile was in Ostend. "Thenk you, sir." He named the hotel, and Conrad proceeded to Piccadilly enamoured of temptation. How tired he was of London! In any case he would go away; why shouldn't he go to Ostend? He had never been there—and he might sit next to her at dinner. It would be an absurdity of course, but——
The hero of thirty-seven with hair silvered at the temples, admonished him from every hoarding and he took a hansom to avoid his sedate contemporary's reproof. Entering the club, he walked through an avenue of decorators' ladders; the smoking-room was full of paint and pails. What could be more absurd than to remain in town?
He winced as it occurred to him that Adaile might have been married twice. Supposing the "Mrs. Adaile" in Ostend proved to be a stranger, an unfamiliar person profaning a hallowed name? How complete a fool he would feel when he arrived! But he would not dwell on that contingency. "Far fetched," he said. Even a fate that showered disappointments as freely as if they were confetti must draw the line somewhere.
He was among the tourists, and the luggage-thieves at Charing Cross by ten o'clock next morning. When he reached Ostend it was a fine afternoon, and the town was baking. By comparison London had been pleasant, so a multitude of Londoners had flocked to Ostend. With trepidation he beheld the hotel that sheltered her—what if he were unable to obtain a room in it? But no—so far, so good. Fate was, perhaps, napping in the heat—a room was to be had. He washed his face in No. 17 victoriously, and overlooked the scarlet geraniums, and the Faience fountain, glistening in a grass plot, and the red-striped sun-umbrellas that sprouted through the little tables. Nobody was visible among the basket chairs. A starling's twittering in a lilac bush, was the only voice. The number of his room chimed with his mood—a happy coincidence. To the manager's mind, at least, he was "seventeen" again. Again he stood in an hotel bedroom preparing to join her downstairs! Had she changedverymuch?
Presently he wandered into the salon, and lounged round the reading-room. Everywhere it was unpromisingly quiet. A hint of siesta pervaded the hotel. Should he go out? He sauntered through the hall, but the dazzle of the Plage blistering in the glare made his eyes ache. He went back to the shade, and ruffled newspapers, and smoked cigarettes. A child came into the scorching courtyard that was called a "garden," and hopped round on one leg, and said to another child, "Can you do that?" The starling twittered imperturbably. Who said Ostend was gay?
Benighted male! the women weren't asleep, they were all changing their frocks again. When he woke he had missed one of the sights of the day—the "creations" that vie with another between five o'clock and seven. A gong was booming. Only the first gong. Good! There was time for him to dress before the room began to fill. He sought the head-waiter, and inquired if a place facing the door could be arranged. The headwaiter had house property, and two sons at college, but he was the urbanest of head-waiters. A novice tips the servants when he leaves an hotel, and, if he is a generous novice, pays for attention which he hasn't received; a traveller of experience tips them when he arrives, and gets the liver wing and a seat by the window.
The second gong was still reverberating when No. 17 descended to dinner. The urbanest of head-waiters hovered on the threshold. For scrutinising the company Conrad had scarcely time to glance at the menu. The doorway was as dazzling as the Plage had been: a cinematograph of toilettes, a succession of audacities—only clusters of diamonds seemed to keep some of the bodices up. Man formed a shifting background to an exhibition of jewels, a pageant of skirts and breasts. Still more gowns. The humming room was the apotheosis of Clothes—until the women sat down, and then it was the apotheosis of Bosom.
She came in late. She wore white satin, embroidered in silver, and a "collar" of emeralds. He recognised her at once. There was no hesitation in his mind—he had expected to hesitate—he knew her the instant she appeared. She had altered certainly—even pathetically; the girl of twenty years ago was lost; but in the flash of the moment the difference in her face startled him less than the difference in her figure. A shade too stout. Yes, a shade too stout for his taste! And—andhadher hair been copper colour in Rouen?
But a pretty woman, nobody could deny it. She didn't look a day more than thirty-five—might pass for thirty now the rose glow of the lamps was on her! ... Well—almost!
Her table was well in view. She was with another woman—perhaps younger, a brunette, vivacious—and an elderly man with projecting teeth, and eyes like a fish. Adaile? How grotesque he must have looked making love! He had a nose as long as the one in Blake's portrait of the man who built the Pyramids. And he used to be unkind to her!—one could read that he was a cold-blooded, unappreciative stick.... Now he was talking to her. On second thoughts, perhaps he wasn't her husband—he displayed the projecting teeth to her in so many smiles. The other woman's husband then! Quite a good chap in his way, no doubt. He was doing them very well in the matter of wine.
Would there be a chance to speak to her to-night? Abominably hard lines if he had to wait till to-morrow, but he wanted to find her alone—in the garden, for preference, in the moonlight.... No—no—thirty-five; but no more, not an hour. How beautiful sheused to be! She didn't know she was sitting in the room with a man she had kissed. Rather an amusing reflection that! ... Scores of men in the room, though; perhaps she did. How sick he would have felt to think so once! Where was the splendid jealousy he ought to feel this evening?
"'Dead as the bulrushes round little MosesOn the old banks of the Nile!'"
He made his coffee last till the party got up, and then followed them to the salon. The salon did not keep them—they drifted to the hall. They disappeared. The hall was a bevy of women who had been upstairs to put on hats, and were desiring to be taken to the Kursaal. "Poppa" was in constant demand. Conrad observed that all the family men seemed inclined to loll where they were, and that all the unaccompanied men made sprightly departures. In the concert-room he found her again, but he didn't find his opportunity. To be sure, he had hardly expected one there. Still he felt rather hipped the last thing at night as he sat among a crowd, and the popping of champagne corks, in a buffet where the casks were utilised as seats, and the ladies' toilettes were as gorgeous—and as modest—as the ladies' toilettes in the hotel.
In the morning he met her coming back from the sands with an enormous sunshade, in the "early bath" costume; and he met her later wearing a picture hat in the "after bath" costume: also he saw her in the costume she put on whendéjeunerwas over—and still she was unapproachable. If she proved too elusive, he'd be tempted to swim after her next day and try his luck in the water. But could he be sentimental with his hair dripping? And even in Ostend it wouldn't be—Oh, in the wrong key altogether!
She was scribbling on a picture postcard at one of the little writing tables, and there was nobody else there.
"May I remind Mrs. Adaile that I have had the happiness of being presented to her?"
She turned her head, and there was approval in the lady's gaze. There was, however, not a scintilla of recognition in it.
"My name is Warrener," he said.
"Oh yes," she murmured; "I'm so short-sighted——how d'ye do?" But he saw that she was twenty years away from knowing who he was.
"This is tremendously nice of you," he exclaimed; "I was afraid you wouldn't remember me."
"How absurd!" she said perfunctorily. "Why shouldn't I? We met at——?"
"But so long ago. Iwasafraid, really. I've been warning myself that you couldn't be expected to remember—and yet I knew I should be so pained if you forgot."
She made a little amiable movement of her hands. He understood it to signify that his doubts had done injustice to them both. Inwardly he laughed.
"Is your husband in Ostend, Mrs. Adaile?"
"No," she said, "no, he's in the Tyrol—Innsbruck. I'm here with my sister and my brother-in-law. You know them, don't you?"
"No, I've never had the pleasure. They weren't with you there."
"Ah, no," she said, "no, they weren't.... Ostend is very dull this year, don't you think?"
"I've found it very exciting; I saw you yesterday at dinner, and I've been trying to meet your eyes ever since."
"Really?" said the lady. She allowed him to meet them, and looked away, her expression vacillating between a pucker and a smile.
"My courage wasn't equal to risking a snub from you publicly, and you were never alone. You balked me last night, you escaped me this morning, and you drove me to desperation this afternoon. I ought to have known you wouldn't forget, but I always had misgivings, hadn't I?"
"Had you?" she said. The pucker was getting the upper hand. She played with the postcard.
"Confess!" said Conrad.
"I remember you perfectly," she insisted with transparent hypocrisy, "but just for the moment I'm fogged where it was we met."
"Will it help me if I mention Normandy?"
"Normandy?" she echoed vaguely.
"Rouen—the Hôtel Britannique—a boy who was called 'Con.'"
"Con?" she cried. And the smile had things all its own way with her; for an instant the spirit of his youth flashed so close that he nearly captured it. "You are 'Con?'"
"Still," he affirmed earnestly. "And you are still—Mrs. Adaile."
"You are Con," she repeated, wondering, "that boy! And did you remember me directly you saw me last night?"
"No—I've remembered you all the time."
"Ah," she laughed reproval, "what a long while ago that makes it seem!—the boy never told me pretty falsehoods."
"The boy never told you half the truth; he was a very backward boy."
"If we are to be friends you mustn't run him down, Mr. Warrener," she said; "I was very fond of Con.... 'Rouen!' Have you ever been there since?"
"No; I was abroad for years—out of Europe, I mean."
"You were going to be an artist?"
"I hoped to be."
"Aren't you?"
"No; I haven't the artist's temperament—I'm too constant."
She regarded the postcard on the table again, and he did justice to her eyelashes.
"Ostend is going down dreadfully, isn't it?" she remarked. "All the ridiculous people who have just got titles have brought them here. We're leaving on Thursday."
He sighed.
"Don't be foolish," she said, not too flippantly.
"Ah," said Conrad now, "what a long while ago that makes it seem!—the boy was not told he was foolish."
"No one could be so unkind to him—and he wasn't."
"You'll make me jealous of that boy before you've done. Don't you believe you could?"
"I don't know what you mean," she declared.
"You used to takehimseriously."
"Oh yes, we were capital friends."
"Did he deserve your friendship more than I?"
"You're absurd," she smiled. Her eyes were as blue as they had been in the Solférino Garden. He looked into them, wishing he could feel the despair that had been his that radiant morning.
"Is a wretched boy you only knew for a few weeks to be privileged above a man who has thought of you for years?" Within an ace he had said "for twenty years," but the blunder was nipped in time.
"You mean 'hours,'" she said. "We dined last night at eight o'clock—it's just four now."
"You don't believe me—you think I'm making the most of a happy accident? What if I gave you a conclusive, an overwhelming proof?"
"A proof of what?"
"Of what? That I am constancy itself! Supposing I told you that my only reason for coming here was to see you again. What would you say to that?"
"I hope I should answer quite politely," she murmured.
"Ah, you didn't doubt me once!" he exclaimed with grave reproach.
"You didn't tell such tarra-diddles once," she urged.
"I came here simply and solely to see you. Look at me. Will you give me your hand?—I want to repeat it solemnly." She glanced at the door, and yielded him her hand. It was very soft and agreeable to hold; he continued with no undue haste: "Now, holding your hand, and with my eyes meeting yours, I say that I came here to see you—for no one, and nothing else—that I had no idea of coming to the place till I knew you were here. That isn't all!" he detained her hand gently. "For an age I have been trying to see you. I knew none of your friends—it was awfully difficult for me. Could I call upon you and begin 'Once upon a time?' Should I write to you? You might read my note in the wrong mood. Oh, I tell you I racked my brains! That isn't all!"—her hand had been retreating again. "The day before yesterday as I passed your house—No. 62; you have window boxes, the flowers are calceolarias and marguerites this season—the day before yesterday as I passed, I saw the shutters were closed. I rang the bell. I deceived your servant, I led him to imagine you—you would be glad to welcome me. I wormed your address from him and threw myself onto the boat rejoicing. That isn't all——"
She drew the hand free, nevertheless, and realising that it wasn't coming back to him yet, he concluded, "But it is enough to show you that you've been cruel."
At this moment they were interrupted, and she said, "Oh, let me—Mr. Warrener, my sister, Lady Bletchworth."
"How d' ye do," said Lady Bletchworth. "Ostend is very dull this year, don't you think?"
"I've just said that," Mrs. Adaile told her.
"It doesn't matter," said Lady Bletchworth. "It's a very good opening remark, and I make it to everybody."
"Won't you put me up to the correct answer?" asked Conrad; "I've only just come, and I should like to catch the tone."
"Most of them say, 'Oh, mydear!'" she replied; "but our latest novelty is, 'Southend! What?'"
"Mr. Warrener's people and I used to be very chummy ages ago," said Mrs. Adaile. "I am afraid to inquire, Mr. Warrener?"
"No," he said, "I—I am alone."
"He was quite nice in those days," she added to her sister.
"What has spoilt you, Mr. Warrener?"
"I find my world so sceptical, Lady Bletchworth."
"Not here," she said; "they can even believe Ostend is smart. Can you do a sum? If 'it takes three generations to make a gentleman,' how many shops does it take to make a knight?"
"One: England," said Conrad.
"I don't believe he's spoilt after all, Joan," said Lady Bletchworth. "There's hope for him yet."
"It's much too early to saythat," murmured Mrs. Adaile. But the glance she cast at him was not discouraging.
The rest of the afternoon promised nothing, so Conrad bought "Le Marquis de Priola" to kill time. It passed away so peacefully that he was surprised when he found it was dead.
After dinner he saw the two women on a lounge, and they moved their skirts for him, and commented on the visitors. There was the Earl of Armoury, wearing a stud as big as a brooch, and a Malmaison the size of a saucer. He made grimaces like Arthur Roberts, and when he sang "Pip, pip! the Lodger and the Twins," Society found him as funny as Harry Randall. As everybody knows, the Duke of Merstham married Flossie Coburg from the music halls; the heir had inherited his mother's gift. "The best of it," said Lady Bletchworth, "is that his mother herself has become too prim for words since she has been respectable. She asks bishops to dinner, and does her hair in plain bands. Heredity is her cross! Oh," she went on, "you'll meet all the world and his wife—Ostend-sibly. A man brought his wife to the hotel last week, and when he went upstairs to bed she wasn't there. After he had searched high and low for her he went to the bureau, and asked the clerk if he could tell him where she was. The clerk hadn't an idea, but said that a married lady came to him a little while ago in a fix—she didn't know the number of her room, and she had forgotten the name of her husband. Please don't smile, I was terribly shocked myself."
Conrad didn't say that the story was not original, and had been told about town six months before.
Then Lord Bletchworth drifted to them, and was tedious. Lord Bletchworth twaddled ponderously. He considered there was a lot of disgraceful bosh being printed about the Service, and the Country at large, in the papers just now. My dear sir, an Englishman who had the interests of England at heart would hold his tongue while she slid down hill, and silently watch her bump to the bottom. That wasn't how he put it, but it was the gist of what he said. He added that the battle of Waterloo had been won on the playing fields of Eton, and he seemed as satisfied with Waterloo as if it were situated in the Transvaal.
However, he had his uses—he walked with his wife when they went to the Kursaal, and left Conrad with Mrs. Adaile.
"How quiet you've become," she said.
"I am asking myself what to say to you."
"Do you find me so hard to talk to?"
"I find you so hard to convince."
"Why try to convince me?"
"Why did I come to Ostend?"
"Oh, that was a pretty tale," she said. "It wasn't true, really, was it?"
"You know it was true. I've looked forward to meeting you again for years. I can't tell you how fond I was of you. You're the only woman I've ever cared for."
"You were a child."
"And now I'm a man—doesn't that show, doesn't it prove? Is it nothing to think of a woman so long as I've thought of you? What other man could say to you whatIcan say?"
"But youmustn'tsay it," she smiled—it cannot be written that she "forbade."
"Is your life so full," he asked, "that you have no room for my love?"
"Mr. Warrener, but really——"
"You hurt me," he said. "What have I done since we parted, to become 'Mr. Warrener' to you?"
"Are we going to sit on the terrace," said Lord Bletchworth, looking back, "or are we going inside? Mr. Warrener, you play, perhaps?"
"No," said Conrad, "I haven't played here. I don't care much about it anyhow."
"Let's sit down outside," said Lady Bletchworth. "It's so hot in there."
On the terrace it was very agreeable. The orchestra did not sound too insistent, and they found chairs where they could watch the people promenade without being inconvenienced by them. Extremes meet, and Ostend is their meeting-place. Only a light railing divides the fashionable world, and the half world from the world that works. On one side plod a humble flock of wearied trippers, who have had tea "As nice as mother makes it," in a sweltering shop at the back of the town. Among the shell pin-cushions, the franc souvenirs, they have had tea. All the evening they pass and repass with flagging feet, wishing they had chosen Margate. On the other side, women who were born in the same class trail Paquin's gowns. On the necks of some there are flowers that have cost as much as a tripper's holiday; a diamond in an ear is worth more than the price of a tripper's home. And Maggie from Dalston, with three tired children clinging to her ten-and-sixpenny skirt, gazes across that slender rail, and thinks. And her thoughts might be unpleasant to hear.
A really extraordinary thing was that no one but Conrad seemed aware that the railing bisected two worlds and a half. As for Conrad his reflections engrossed him so much that he quite forgot to attend to Mrs. Adaile. Only when he chanced to notice she was looking pensive in the starlight did it occur to him that he was ignoring a situation by which he ought to be thrilled.
For here they were. The stars were twinkling, the waves were murmuring, the lady was waiting. It was true her sister and Bletchworth were in the way, but even allowing for their presence this should mean emotion. Where was it? On the terrace while he made small talk, and on the Plage when they strolled back, and as he smoked his last cigar that night in the garden, the question in Conrad's mind was insistently "Where is the emotion?"
Because she was still an attractive woman, and he perceived it. He was even making love to her—toher, to Mrs. Adaile!—and she was not adamant. What had happened to him? Where were his transports, the spiritual whirlwinds, where was everything that he had travelled to recover?
She had a whim to do fancy work in the salon next day during the hour when the women changed their déjeuner dresses for the five-o'clock-to-seven costumes. He had met her as she was passing his door—their rooms were in the same passage—and they had gone downstairs together.
"You've told me nothing of your life since we used to know each other," he said, playing with a thimble.
"What would you like me to tell you?"
"You used to tell me a good deal—if I am privileged to remember it."
"I'm afraid I did. How I must have bored you! It was rather a shame. But I was in my egotistical stage, and you listened with such big eyes—Con."
"Thank you," said Conrad. "But I wasn't bored. And you weren't an egotist—you were the sweetest woman I've ever met. I was awfully sorry for you—so sorry! Only a cub's sympathy, but you've had none truer from anyone."
"You were a nice boy—I've thought about you sometimes. Are the scissors there? Do look."
"If a woman knows when she is really loved, you should have thought about me very often," he answered, giving them to her. "Are you happier than you were?"
"Let us say I don't worry so much about being unhappy. I suppose it amounts to the same thing." She sighed—and smiled. "Would you do this leaf green, or yellow?"
"I shouldn't do it at all," he said. "Put it down and talk to me. I remember once when you were telling me your troubles, you cried. It was one afternoon on the terrace; you had on a pale blue frock, and a big floppy hat. I'd have given my life to kiss you at that moment."
"You mustn't say these things to me," she faltered. She said it more gravely than on the Plage; she was not smiling now, and she lowered her eyes—he knew that he might seize her hands.
"I've waited for you so long," he exclaimed. "Joan, be kind to me!"
But his heart did not thud in her silence. He held her hands fast; the doyley she was making had fallen to the couch.
At last she murmured, still looking down, "How can you care for me? We've only just met."
"I've cared for you ever since. If you knew how I worshipped you—if you knew what I suffered when you were vexed with me! That night you sat talking to those men, and the next morning when you were offended—I remember what I felt as if it were a month ago. I remember what you said as you turned away, and how I sat watching, praying that you'd come back. And then I waited at the door, and begged your pardon, and you wouldn't forgive me. I've relived it all so often. I did love you, darling, I did, I did! ... It sounds idiotic: there was a song of yours, 'To-day, to-day our dream is over—To-day the waking cold and grey'; I learnt to strum the refrain there to—to make me feel nearer to you when I had gone. Since I've been a man I've strummed that refrain a hundred times, and longed for you—I was strumming it years after you had forgotten you ever sang it. I've thought about you sometimes till my boyhood has been alive in me, trembling. If Faust's chance could have come to me in any year since we parted, I'd have said 'Let me be seventeen again in Rouen.'"
"The past is always beautiful. I made you very wretched, though."
"But you liked me a little. Heaven knows why I—I was a fool. Still you did."
"Perhaps it was because you were a 'fool' that I was foolish. That's all over." She drew her hands from his clasp.
"It isn't over," he said. "You sha'n't say it's over. The present may be as beautiful as the past."
She shook her head; "Can we work miracles? Can I make myself a girl again, or you a boy?"
"Yes, if you've not forgotten what you felt for me. If the memories are not all mine, you can even do that. You see I'm a fool still; I—I half hoped that you'd remember.... Joan, 'you were not once so wise!'"
"Ah!" she said. "If I were younger now—or if you had been older then—who knows?"
"Could you sing that song still?" he asked. "Listen." He opened the piano, and played a few bars. "Can you?"
"Oh!" She forced a laugh. "It was too long ago. And what a song besides!"
"Try," he pleaded. "Try it!"
"I can't remember the words," she murmured
"The words?—
'You tell me, Love, that I'll forget you—I own it, in our last "good-bye,"'
I'd be so grateful. Please!"
"How does it go on?"
"It goes on—
'Our dream has been too sweet to let youRemember that I spoke a lie.'"
"Oh yes," she said, coming forward. She hummed. "Let me see!—
'I know the years will crowd above you,I know despair must fade away;But here and now I know I love you,I love you—and we part—to-day.'
Is that it?"
"That's it; and then there's what I was playing—
'To-day, to-day our dream is over,To-day the waking, cold and grey.'"
She nodded; "Yes, yes—
'What care I Time will—'
something, what is it?—
'The throes that rend my heart to-day?'
Well, I'll try, but I'm sure I sha'n't be able to. I haven't heard it for years."
Then she sat down, and began it; and he shut his eyes and tried to think he was seventeen and she was twenty.
The music stopped short. "I knew it would be a failure! It's gone. It was too long ago," she repeated.
"It was yesterday!" he cried, and caught her in his arms as she got up.
For a second she held him back from her, regarding him curiously. Regret, tenderness, irony were mingled in the gaze she bent on him. Like him she mourned for what had perished; like him she sought to delude herself that it bloomed anew.... "It's absurd," she said, and drooped to him with a kiss.
As they moved apart, both were disappointed. The man thought, "I have spoilt my memory of her kiss to me in Rouen."
"I adore you," he said mechanically.
The woman's smile was enigmatic as she left him.
"Are you heartless?" he continued; "have you no pity for me?"
It was the next evening. They were sitting among the basket chairs and the dinner dresses in the garden, and there was no one inconveniently near. Lady Bletchworth had gone inside a few minutes before. A warm breeze bore strains of Chopin to them from theKursaal; the little fountain plashed languidly, and a full moon had been assisting Conrad to deceive himself.
"I am not heartless," returned Mrs. Adaile, "I am sensible. And—there are a thousand reasons."
"For one thing?"
"For one thing.... I don't want romance—I want comedy. I want to laugh with you, my dear Con, not to be serious."
This was difficult to answer, for he could not offer to laugh at his grand passion. He sighed.
"Besides," she went on, "I couldn't make you happy. It isn't in my power—you don't really care for me. You are in love with a memory, not with me. I'm no longer the woman you fell in love with. I've changed. Really I didn't know how much I had changed till you came here, I must like you very much to want to talk to you—because you make me feel elderly, you do indeed."
"You're unjust," he exclaimed—and he was genuinely distressed. "Not care for you? You don't believe it, you can't believe that. I swear to you——"
"No, don't," she said. "I can imagine all you would say. Haven't I listened to you? Haven't I even ... tried to make illusions for myself? You talk of what you felt for me, not of what you feel. You don't know it, but you rave to me about what I was, not about what I am. You remember the hat and the frock I had on twenty years ago—can you tell me what I wore last night?"
"Is such constancy nothing?" he cried hastily.
"It would be irresistible," she said, "if you could find the girl that you've been constant to. But she doesn't live, Con—she's gone.Iam such a different person from the girl you've looked for that—that I've even felt a tiny bit jealous sometimes of your rhapsodies to me about her. Well? I'm being quite frank with you, you see. It's pathetic, I think. There have been moments when I've listened to you and felt a little pained because you seemed to forget all about me.... I am hurting you?"
"You hurt me," said Conrad, "because for the first time I realise youaredifferent from the girl I've looked for. Till now I've felt that I was with her again."
"That's nice of you, but it isn't true. Oh, I like you for saying it, of course.... If you had felt it really——"
"Go on."
"No, what for? I should only make you unhappier."
"You want comedy?" he demurred; "you have said the saddest things a woman ever said to me!"
She raised a white shoulder—with a laugh; "I never get what I want!"
"It should have taught you to feel for me, but you are not 'wondrous kind.'"
"Oh, I am more to be pitied than you are! What have I got in my life? Friends? Yes—to play bridge with. My husband? He delivers speeches on local option, and climbs mountains. Both make me deadly tired. I used to go in for music—'God save the King' is the only tune he knows when he hears it, and he only knows that because the men take their hats off. I was interested in my house at the beginning—after you've quarrelled in your house every day for years it doesn't absorb you to make the mantelpiece look pretty. I wanted a child—well, my sister has seven! ... Voilà my autobiography up to date."
"There is to-morrow," said Conrad, moved.
"To-morrow you must give me the comedy," she smiled; "and the morning after, I go to the Highlands—and big men will shoot little birds, and think it's 'sport.' Did you ever see a sparrow die? I watched one once. It was human. Like a child! ... Come on, come on, let's go out!"
And behold another woman! She had been wise, and dejected him; now she was unwise, to make amends. Behold a myriad women in one. Before half an hour had passed she had told him her philosophy was a puff ball, that she had prated reason only to be reasoned with. And she told him so without a word about it—said so by the modulation of her voice while they talked trifles.
And Conrad? Conrad had been scrambling to the point of friendship, and he slipped back to folly. Conrad strove to forget that discomfiting phrase, "You are in love with a memory, not with me." It made the folly so difficult.
He could not succeed in forgetting it. It was in his mind next day, coldly a fact. Yes, he was making love to Mrs. Adaile because she was Mrs. Adaile, not because she was a charming woman. He knew that if they hadn't met before he came to Ostend, he might have admired her, tried to know her, grown to like her, but that he would never have said to her what he had said. Nor wished to say it.
Yet there was the regnant truth that it was she. She had the fascination of sharing with him his dearest, his sweetest remembrances; the radiance of the past still tinged her—in her keeping lay the wonder of his youth.
So they ate Neapolitan ices in the morning, and she brought down the doyley in the afternoon, and they listened to Chopin again in the evening.
It was the last evening. The Bletchworths and she were leaving early on the morrow, and he was unlikely to be alone with her again before she went.
"I wish you weren't going," he said. "How horribly I shall miss you! I sha'n't stop here. Why aren't you going to Homburg, instead of to people in Scotland? Then we might have met again."
"Are you going to Homburg to be 'cured'?"
"I think I shall go there. Or to Antwerp. Yes, I shall go to Antwerp first. I was there when I was a boy. I was happy in Antwerp."
"How funny you are," she said involuntarily.
"I've never found anyone much entertained by me. How?"
"You'll go to Antwerp, of all places in the world, because you liked it when you were a boy! Antwerp will disappoint you—too."
"You could always stab deep with a monosyllable," he said, "but you used to have more mercy."
"I'm sorry I have deteriorated," said the lady rather stiffly.
She leant back in her chair, and a minute passed in silence. She gave her attention to the orchestra, tapping time with the tip of a shoe.
"Does it amuse you to say cruel things to me?" asked Conrad. "If it does, by all means say what you like."
"I don't understand you." She drooped disdainful eyelids.
"What you said was unworthy of you. You know it was."
"I really forget what I did say. Please talk about something else. What is it they are playing?"
They were playingCavallerianow, so he scorned to reply to this otherwise than by a look.
"I asked you a question," she said in tones of ice.
"I beg your pardon," he answered hastily. "They are playingCavalleria Rusticana. An opera. Written by a young Italian. His name is Mascagni."
"You are rude!" she exclaimed.
"I am human, Joan. You hurt me!"
Then her sister and Bletchworth reappeared. "Perhaps you know a good hotel?" Conrad was saying.
"An hotel where?" inquired Lady Bletchworth.
"Mr. Warrener is going to Homburg; I tell him everybody says it's deadly dull there this year," murmured Mrs. Adaile.
It was deadly dull in Ostend, too, during the next hour. Both women were rather quiet, and Bletchworth was exceptionally wearisome. But for the fact that it was the farewell evening Conrad would have seen friends among the company and gone to greet them.
However, at last the orchestra finished, and they all got up. A leisurely crowd was flocking to the exit, and—perhaps it was the crowd, perhaps it was Lady Bletchworth—Conrad and Mrs. Adaile were separated from the others for satisfactory seconds.
"Won't you forgive me?" he whispered.
Even a crowd has merits—her hand rested on his arm an instant.
"It must be fate," he said; "I always offend you just when we're going to part. Do you remember?"
She nodded. "I remember." Her glance was very pretty in the moonshine.
"This won't be our last talk together?" he begged. "What are you going to do when we go in?"
"I suppose we shall sit in the garden."
"But—everybody?"
"I expect so.... Don't let's keep behind! Walk with Lily." She addressed her brother-in-law, and Conrad sauntered beside Lady Bletchworth.
The windows of the Villa this, and the Villa that, were thrown wide behind the mass of blooms. In the crimson dusk of lamp-shades there was the glint of a white gown, the glow of a cigarette point among cushions, a bubble of laughter. Every minute a dim interior flashed to brightness—someone returned and switched on the light, a woman took off her hat before the mirror. Through one window came the jingle of money on a card table; through another shouts—Paulette Fleury was singing to friends one of the songs that she had not sung at the Empire in London. To the left, the track of moonlight on the sea kept pace with Conrad.
It was more agreeable in the garden than on the terrace at the onset. Already it had an air of intimacy, the artificial enclosure, with its tesselated paving, and its affectation of rusticity; already he was on good terms with it. Curiously enough, such hotel gardens, misnamed as they are, have a knack of making a visitor feel at home, of endearing themselves to him, more quickly than acres of lawns and elms.
Lady Bletchworth wanted a brandy-and-soda, and Conrad had one, too; Mrs. Adaile and Bletchworth drank champagne. Presently they referred to the shooting-box, to the people they expected to see there. Almost for the first time Conrad was blankly sensible of inhabiting a different sphere; he hoped they wouldn't ask him if he knew any of the people they were mentioning. He got very near to his youth in that moment; there was a revival of his boyhood's dumb constraint.... How odd it was! they were all sitting together like this, and after to-night he was never likely to meet her. Front doors between them. 'Gina, of course, might be useful; but how stupid of him not to have got into the right set in town when he came back from the Colony! He supposed it wouldn't have been difficult, with the money. Londoners boasted that everything the world yielded was to be bought in London, and it was true—even to dignities and reputations.
"Well, I am forced to admit that I don't know what women go to the moors for," said Bletchworth. "You don't take the sport seriously, and therefore you are out of place. What do you say, Mr. Warrener?"
"Well, I can hardly say anything," owned Conrad; "Idon'tgo to the moors."
"But if you did, you wouldn't prefer a grouse to a woman, I'm sure?" asked Lady Bletchworth.
"A man does not go to the moors to talk to women," insisted her husband. "That is my point. Women always want to flirt just as the birds are rising. Women are very desirable at a dance, but when it comes to birds, or it comes to cricket, when it comes to anything important, I say, reluctantly, they can't be serious. That is my point—you don't take the thing seriously. Now, at the Eton and Harrow, were you earnest about it; had you got the matter at heart? No, no; all you wanted to do was to walk about, and to have lunch."
"A lot of boys playing ball!" she said. "And then they take up all the lawn besides. So selfish of them!"
"Ah!" said Bletchworth warningly, "that is the tone that is going to do the harm, that is the tone we have to guard against. What has made us what we are? What has given England the place she holds? I protest, I protest absolutely against irresponsible—er—comment. The foreign ideas that are creeping into papers that have always had my—er—approval will sap the country's manhood if we don't make a stand. Joan—I am sure Joan agrees with me?"
She was leaning back absently, trifling with a porte-bonheur on her wrist; the blue fire of the diamonds was ablaze. It caught Conrad's glance; from her wrist his gaze travelled to her eyes. They told him, "I'm so bored."
"Yes, indeed," she assented, "you're quite right." It would have been evident to anyone but Bletchworth that she had not heard what he said.
There were fewer people in the garden by this time. In the knowledge that the evening was nearly over, a wave of sentiment stirred Conrad. Even her message of comprehension did nothing to subdue his annoyance. What likelihood remained of a tête-à-tête? The evening from first to last had been wasted in stupidities.
Presently another group went inside, presently there was no one left but themselves. Finally Lady Bletchworth yawned. He wished fervently that she had yawned an hour ago.
"I think it's time we all went to bed," she said. "You've laid down the law quite enough, Charlie. Shall we see you in the morning, Mr. Warrener?"
"Oh yes," he said, "of course. What time is the boat?"
"I don't know—ten something, isn't it? Well, I'll say 'good night.' I wish we were staying on, really I do—I shall have a racking headache to-morrow evening. Are you ready, Joan?"
"Quite," said Mrs. Adaile; "Ihave a headache now."
He was hopeless until she let him see her slip the porte-bonheur into her chair before she rose.
"Good night, Mr. Warrener."
"Good night, Mrs. Adaile," he said.
When he was alone he sat down again, and waited for her return; her manoeuvre might fail, someone return with her—the bracelet must be lying where she had "dropped" it.
More than five minutes crept by before a step sounded. He turned eagerly, and with dismay beheld Lord Armoury approaching. The intruder gaped at the view, and stood hesitating, with his hands in his pockets. It was an instant of the keenest suspense. Would he withdraw? No, he lounged forward. He threw himself into the very chair, and stretched his legs across another.
Conrad muttered an anathema on him.
"Eh?" said Lord Armoury.
"I didn't speak," said Conrad frigidly.
The young man took out a cigarette, and opened his match-box. It was empty.
"Got a light?" he inquired.
"I'm sorry I haven't," said Conrad, momentarily encouraged.
"Rotten show!" said the Earl; "where's a waiter?" He contemplated his cigarette with a semi-intoxicated frown, and transferred his feet to the table. It was apparent that he meant to stop although he could not smoke. With his change of position he was liable to come in contact with the bracelet, and Conrad watched him nervously, but he did not seem to be discommoded by it.
"Seen Paulette?" he asked.
"No." The "no" of a man who is not to be drawn into conversation.
"Pauly's a bit ofallright," affirmed the Earl, undeterred. "I don't pretend to be up to all the patter, but—wotho!"
Speechlessly Conrad hoped the lady wouldn't come back yet.
"Three hundred a week she refused for a return engagement at the Empire—told me so herself to-night. That's Pauly! Got the hump. What's three hundred to Pauly? I told 'em how she'd catch on before she went over. Don't I know?" He winked profoundly. "Look here, you'll see an artist in October at the Syndicate halls, that's—wotho! She's going to knock 'em. Between ourselves she's got some new 'business,' that—well, it's great! Never been tried. I saw her when she was doing the last turn at the South London. I said to George, 'Cocky, that's a winner!' Robey couldn't see it.Isaw it; I can put my finger on the talent every time. She's going to make Marie sit up, my boy—she's another Marie Lloyd. Don't Iknow? I've got the judgment. I can spot 'em with one peeper! ... Isn't there a waiter in this damned hotel? I could do with a tiddley. Where's a bell?"
"It's no use ringing," said Conrad, "nobody ever comes. It wants someone to go in and stir them up."
But now Mrs. Adaile reappeared.
"Oh!" she murmured. And then, "I've dropped a bracelet somewhere; I came down to look for it. Good evening, Lord Armoury."
"A bracelet?" echoed Conrad with concern.
"Good evening, Mrs. Adaile—a bracelet? Crumbs!" said Armoury.
"Yes, isn't it a nuisance! I don't know how I could have lost it—I suppose the clasp was loose. I had it on out here."
"Let me help you," said Conrad. In an undertone he added, "Don't find it yet. Let's look further off. Oh my dearest, it was so sweet of you! I'm in such a rage, I'm so wretched."
"Where were you sitting, Mrs. Adaile?" asked Armoury, peering about.
"Over here, over there, I don't know," she said hurriedly.... "Is it still in the chair?" she whispered.
"Yes," whispered Conrad. "Are you sorry you're going from me?"
"A little."
"To leave you like this," he sighed, "it's awful. Joan——"
"Well?"
"Let me come to your room to say 'good-bye.'"
She started.
"Hallo! Have you got it?" exclaimed Armoury.
"No," she said, "I—I thought I had."
"Joan?"
"I daren't," she faltered. "My maid——"
"Come and say 'good-bye' tome, then. Do!"
"Find it!" she said agitatedly—"he'll guess."
"What's that?" cried Conrad. "Here it is—why, in one of our chairs! May I—?" He fastened the bracelet on her wrist. "Make me happy. Come to me," he begged. "Will you? Number seventeen."
Her fingers touched his hand.
"I'm so immensely grateful to you both," she said serenely.
"Lucky for her we were here!" the intruder remarked when she had gone. "One of the servants might have pinched it by the morning."
"Yes, I suppose it was as well we were here," said Conrad amiably. "If it hadn't been for you, I should have turned in before this." He dropped back into his seat, resigning himself to tedium a little longer.
He lolled there discreetly, making civil responses—and gradually he realised that Flossie Coburg's son was not wholly to be blamed for the tedium; he recognised that there was a dulness of his own spirit. While he countenanced the garrulity of a fool, his thoughts were with scenes of twenty years before, and sadly the man strove to revive in his heart the idolatry and illusions of the boy. Oh, for the enchantment of the summer when he had called her "Mrs. Adaile!" ... If he could only keep remembering it was the same woman! But never had she seemed so different to him as in these minutes—never had he desired so little as now when she had promised all.
The ground floor of the hotel was partially dark when he crossed it; a purposeless waiter hovered in obscurity. Upstairs, along the passage, the tan and black rows of boots, shapely on boot-trees, indicated that most of the visitors had retired. A drowsy lady's-maid put forth an expectant face, and withdrew it wearily. Conrad felt about the wall for the electric button, which seemed always in a different spot, and found it. Then he closed his door as completely as was possible without turning the knob.
As he put down his watch he saw that it was late, but he knew that it was not yet late enough, and his movements were leisurely. He wanted a cigarette—the more because he had deprived himself of one outside by saying that he had no match, but he was reluctant to give the odour of tobacco to the room. A superfluous grace, perhaps, now that most women smoked? Still he was reluctant. He threw down his cigarette-case, too, and the rest of the things that had been in his pockets....
He looked at himself ruminatingly in the mirror, and brushed his moustache.
One of the lights hung above the pillow—it was convenient to read by. Presently it occurred to him that nearly two acts of "Le Marquis de Priola" remained to divert him. He put forth his arm for it, and, stretching, reached it. He turned the leaves....Une dame viendra de deux à trois. Ah yes, this was as far as he had read.
The effort to give his attention to the play grew gradually less. Mournfulness faded, and in the next scene his interest was alert. Once he laughed. His thoughts were no longer with the boy who had lain wakeful through a night just to hear her footstep in the hall.
The wind was rising, and intermittently it tricked and irritated him. The blustering wind, and the chiming of a clock made the only sounds.
Again the clock rang out. This time he counted the strokes with annoyance. He yawned. His interest was wandering from the play now. It began to seem to him that Priola talked too much. What was keeping her—had she repented her promise? He tossed the book aside, and lay watching the door.
After he had watched it for nearly half-an-hour it was gently opened, and swiftly closed, and Mrs. Adaile stood on the threshold. She paused there diffidently, with downcast eyes. She wore a long clinging robe of crêpe de chine, veiled partly by a stole of Venetian point. The sleeves of the deep toned lace, dividing at the shoulders, drooped from her like wings. One daring touch of colour, the flame of nasturtium, at her breast threw into dazzling relief the gleaming whiteness of her skin, the burnished gold of her hair. She paused, awaiting doubtless the words of welcome, of encouragement, that would vanquish her timidity. But Conrad slept. A respiration too loud to be thought rapture, and too faint to be called a snore, smote the lady's hearing. Startled, she looked up; forked lightning flashed at him from her indignant eyes. But, tranquil, Conrad slept.
What an offence! Wasn't it enough to enrage the sweetest of women? Put yourself—I mean it was unpardonable!
For a second she seemed about to escape even more surreptitiously than she had entered; and then a smile, half sad, half whimsical, twitched her lips. A sense of humour—how much it spares us, how far it goes in life! A little pathetic that often a sense of humour wins affection, and the noble qualities get nothing but a dull respect. She looked at a pencil-case on the table, and stood tempted, her fingers at her mouth. Dared she do it! She would not have roused him for a coronet—and the creak of a board, even the scratching of the lead, might be fatal. She wavered. She moved towards the pencil slowly, stealthily, inch by inch.
The table was gained. There was nothing to write on. A paper-covered volume lay to her hand; with infinite precaution she tore the title-page. Tremulously she scribbled, holding her breath. Where to leave the message, where to put it so that it couldn't be overlooked? Again she hesitated. Conrad slept sound, a glance assured her of it. Again she ventured. An instant her gaze dwelt upon him, still with that smile half mirthful and half melancholy on her face. She nodded, wide-eyed—and on the tips of her toes crept out unheard, unseen.
When Conrad woke, a servant was admitting the sunshine through the window; his coffee steamed by his side. As he sat up—and almost before memory thudded in him—his view met the front page of "Le Marquis de Priola" pinned to the bed-curtain. He rolled towards it haggardly. On it was written:—
"Dreamer! Good-bye. There is no way back to Rouen."