There was a cry. It was several seconds before he realised that it had broken from his lips. He looked around him like a hunted creature. There was another terror now—the gloomy court with its ugly, miserable paraphernalia—the death, uglier still, death in disgrace, a sordid, ghastly thing! And in his brain, too, there was so much dawning, so many wonderful ideas craving for fulfilment. These few months had been months of marvellous development. The power of the writer had seemed to grow, hour by hour. His brain was full of fancies, exquisite fancies some of them. It was a new world growing up around him and within him, too beautiful a world to leave. Yet, in those breathless moments, fear was the dominant sensation. He felt a coward to his fingertips…
He walked up and down the room feverishly, as a man might pace a prison in the first few moments of captivity. There was no escape! If he disappeared again, it would only rivet suspicion the more closely. There was no place to which he could fly, no shelter save on the other side of the life which he had just begun to love. His physical condition began to alarm him. He felt his forehead by accident and found it damp with sweat. His heart was beating irregularly with a spasmodic vigour which brought pain. He caught sight of his terror-stricken face in the looking-glass, and the craving to escape from his frenzied solitude overcame all his other resolutions. He rushed to the telephone, spoke with Phoebe, waited breathlessly whilst she fetched his mistress to the instrument.
"I want to see you," he begged, as soon as he was conscious of her presence at the other end. "I want to see you at once."
"Has anything happened?" she asked quickly.
"Yes!" he almost groaned. "I can't tell you—"
"I will be with you in ten minutes," she promised.
He set the receiver down. Those ten minutes were surely the longest which had ever ticked their way into Eternity! And then she came. He heard the lift stop and his door open. There was a moment's breathless silence as their eyes met, then a little gathering together of the lines of her forehead, a half querulous, half sympathetic smile. She shook her head at him.
"You've had one of those silly nervous attacks," she declared. "Tell me at once why?"
"Dane is back—I saw him on the pavement this morning!" he exclaimed. "He has been to England to find out!"
She made him sit down and seated herself by his side.
"Listen," she said, "Dane came back on theOrinoco, the day before yesterday. I saw his name in the paper. If his voyage to England had been a success, which it could not have been, you would have heard from him before now."
"I didn't think of that," he muttered.
"I have never asked you," she went on, "to tell me exactly what happened behind there. I don't want to know. Only I have a consciousness—I had from the first, when you began to talk to me about it—that your fears were exaggerated. If you have been allowed to remain safe all this time, you will be safe always. I feel it, and I am always right in these things. Now use your own common sense. Tell me truthfully, don't you think it is very improbable that anything could be discovered?"
"That anything could be proved," he admitted eagerly, "yes!"
"Then don't be silly. No one is likely to make accusations and attempt a case unless they had a definite end in view. We are safe even from theElletaniapeople. Mr. Raymond Greene has ceased to talk of your wonderful resemblance to Douglas Romilly. Phoebe—the only one who could really know—will never open her lips. Now take me for a little walk. We will look in the shops in Fifth Avenue and lunch at the Ritz-Carlton. Go and brush yourself and make yourself look respectable. I'll have a cigarette and read the paper…. No, I won't, I'll look over these loose sheets and see how you are getting on."
He disappeared into his room for a few minutes. When he returned she was entirely engrossed. She looked up at him with something almost of reverence in her face.
"When did you write this?" she asked.
"Yesterday, most of it," he answered. "There is more of it—I haven't finished yet. When you send me away this afternoon, I shall go on. That is only the beginning. I have a great idea dawning."
"What you have written is wonderful," she said simply. "It makes me feel almost humble, makes me feel that the very best actress in the world remains only an interpretress. Yes, I can say those words you have written, but they can never be mine. I want to be something more than an intelligent parrot, Philip. Why can't you teach me to feel and think things like that?"
"You!" he murmured, as he took her arm and led her to the door. "You could feel all the sweetest and most wonderful things in heaven. The writer's knack is only a slight gift. I put on paper what lives in your heart."
She raised her head, and he kissed her lips. For a moment he held her quite quietly. Her arms encircled him. The perfume of her clothes, her hair, her warm, gentle touch, seemed like a strong sedative. If she said that he was safe, he must be. It was queer how so often at these times their sexes seemed reversed; it was he who felt that womanly desire for shelter and protection which she so amply afforded him. She patted his cheek.
"Now for our little walk," she said. "Open the windows and let out all these bad fancies of yours. And listen," she went on, as they stepped out of the lift a moment or two later, and passed through the hall towards the pavement, "not a word about our own problem. We are going to talk nonsense. We are going to be just two light-hearted children in this wonderful city, gazing at the sights and taking all she has to offer us. I love it, you know. I love the noise of it. It isn't a distant, stifled roar like London. There's a harsh, clarion-like note about it, like metal striking upon metal. And the smell of New York—there isn't any other city like it! When we get into Fifth Avenue I am going to direct your attention to the subject of hats. Have you ever bought a woman's hat, Philip?"
"Never," he answered, truthfully enough.
"Then you are going to this morning, or rather you are going to help me to choose one," she declared, "and in a very few moments, too. There is a little place almost underground in Fifth Avenue there, and a Frenchwoman—oh, she is so French!—and all her assistants have black hair and wear untidy, shapeless clothes and velvet slippers. It isn't New York at all, but I love it, and I let them put their name on the programme. They really don't charge me more than twice as much as they ought to for my hats. We go down here," she added, descending some steps, "and if you make eyes at any of the young women I shall bring you straight out again."
They spent half an hour choosing a hat and nearly two hours over lunch. It was late in the afternoon before she dropped him at his rooms. Not a word had they spoken of Sylvanus Power or their future, but Philip was a different man. Only, as he turned and said good-by, his voice trembled.
"I can't say thank you," he muttered, "but you know!"…
The lift was too slow for him. He opened his door with almost breathless haste. He only paused to light a cigarette and change his coat and wheel his table round so as to catch the afternoon light more perfectly. Then, with his brain teeming with fancies, he plunged into his work.
Philip let the pen slip at last from his tired fingers. The light had failed. He had been writing with straining eyes, almost in the darkness. But there was something else. Had it been fancy or … This time there could be no mistake. He had not heard the lift stop, but some one was knocking softly at the door, softly but persistently. He turned his head. The room seemed filled with shadows. He had written for hours, and he was conscious that his limbs were stiff. The sun had gone down in a cloudy sky, and the light had faded. He could scarcely distinguish the articles of furniture at the further end of the room. For some reason or other he felt tongue-tied. Then, without any answer from him to this mysterious summons, the handle of the door slowly turned. As he sat there he saw it pushed open. A woman, wrapped in a long coat, stepped inside, closing it firmly behind her. She stood peering around the room. There was something familiar and yet unfamiliar in her height, her carriage. He waited, spellbound, for her voice.
"Douglas!" she exclaimed. "Ah, there you are!"
The words seemed to die away, unuttered, upon his lips. He suddenly thought that he was choking. He stared at her blankly. It was impossible! She came a step further into the room. Her hand was stretched out accusingly.
"So I've found you, have I, Douglas?" she cried, and there was a note of bitter triumph in her words, "found you after all these months! Aren't you terrified? Aren't you afraid? No wonder you sit there, shrinking away! Do you know what I have come for?"
He tried to speak, but his lips were as powerless to frame words as his limbs were to respond to his desire for movement. This was the one thing which he had not foreseen.
"You broke your promise," she went on, raising her voice a little in passionate reproach. "You left me there alone to face dismissal, without a penny, and slipped off yourself to America. You never even came in to wish me good-by. Why? Tell me why you went without coming near me?… You won't, eh? You daren't. Be a man. Out with it. I am here, and I know the truth."
For the first time some definite sound came from his lips.
"Beatrice!" he gasped.
"Ah!" she mocked. "You can remember my name, then? Douglas, I knew that you were a bad man. I knew that when you told me how you meant to cheat your creditors, how you meant to escape over here on the pretext of business, and bring all the money you could scrape together. I knew that, and yet I was willing to come with you, and I should have come. But there was one thing I didn't reckon upon. I didn't know that you had the heart or the courage to be a murderer!"
The little cry that broke from his lips was stifled even before it was uttered.
"I shall never forgive you!" she sobbed. "I never want to touch your bloodstained fingers! I have forgotten that I ever loved you. You're horrible—do you hear?—horrible! And yet, I don't mean to be left to starve. That's why I've followed you. You're afraid I am going to give you up to justice? Well, I don't know. It depends…. Turn on the lights. I want to see you. Do you hear? I want to see how you can face me. I want to see how the memory of that afternoon has dealt with you. Do as I tell you. Don't stand there glowering at me."
He crossed the room with stumbling footsteps.
"You've learnt to stoop, anyhow," she went on. "You're thinner, too…. My God!"
The room was suddenly flooded with light. Philip, rigid and ghastly, was looking at her from the other side of the table. She held up her hands as though to shut out the sight of him.
"Philip!" she shrieked. "Philip!… Oh, my God!"
Her eyes were lit with horror as she swayed upon her feet. For a moment she seemed about to collapse. Then she groped her way towards the door and stood there, clinging to the handle. Slowly she looked around over her shoulder, her face as white as death. She moistened her lips with her tongue, her eyes glared at him. Behind, her brain seemed to be working. Her first spasm of inarticulate fear passed.
"Philip—-alive!" she muttered. "Alive!… Speak! Can't you speak to me?Are you a ghost?"
"Of course not," he answered, with a calm which surprised him. "You can't have forgotten in less than six months what I look like."
A new expression struggled into her face. She abandoned her grasp of the handle and came back to her former position.
"Look here," she faltered, "if you are Philip Romilly, where's he—Douglas?… Where's Douglas?"
There was no answer. Philip simply looked at her. She began to shake once more upon her feet.
"Where's Douglas?" she demanded fiercely. "Tell me? Tell me quickly, before I go mad! If you are Philip Romilly alive, if it wasn't your body they found, where's Douglas?"
"You can guess what happened to him," Philip said slowly. "I met him on the towing-path by the side of the canal. I spoke to him—about you. He answered me with a jest. I think that all the passion of those grinding years of misery swept up at that moment from my heart. I was strong—God, how strong I was! I took him by the throat, Beatrice. I watched his face change. I watched his damned, self-satisfied complacency fade away. He lost all his smugness, and his eyes began to stare at me, and his lips grew whiter as they struggled to utter the cries for mercy which choked back. Then I flung him in—that's all. Splash!… God, I can hear it now! I saw his face just under the water. Then I went on."
"You went on?" she repeated, trembling in every limb.
"I picked up the pocketbook which I had shaken out of his clothes in that first struggle. I studied its contents, and it gave me an idea. I went to Liverpool, stayed at the hotel where he had engaged rooms, dressed myself in his clothes, and went on the steamer in his place. I travelled to New York as Mr. Douglas Romilly of the Douglas Romilly Shoe Company, occupied my room at the Waldorf under that name. Then I disappeared suddenly—there were too many people waiting to see me. I took the pseudonym which he had carefully prepared for himself and hid for a time in a small tenement house. Then I rewrote the play. There you have my story."
"You—murdered him, Philip!… You!"
"It was no crime," he continued calmly, filled with a queer sense of relief at the idea of being able to talk about it. "My whole life, up till that day, had been one epitome of injustice and evil fortune. You were my one solace. His life—well, you know what it had been. Everything was made easy for him. He had a luxurious boyhood, he was sent to college, pampered and spoilt, and passed on to a dissipated manhood. He spent a great fortune, ruined a magnificent business. He lived, month by month, hour by hour, for just the voluptuous pleasures which his wealth made possible to him. That was the man I met on the canal bank that afternoon. You know the state I was in. You know very well the grievance I had against him."
"You had no right to interfere," she said dully. "If I chose to accept what he had to give, it was my business. There never had been over-much affection between you and me. We were just waifs together. Life wouldn't give us what we wanted. I had made up my mind months before to escape whenever the opportunity came. Douglas brought it to me and I snatched at it. I am not accepting any blame."
He leaned towards her.
"Neither am I," he declared. "Do you remember we used to talk about the doctrine of responsibility? I am a pervert. I did what I had to do, and I am content."
She stood quite still for several moments. Then she took out the pins from her hat, banged it upon the table, opened her tweed coat, came round to the fireside, and threw herself into an easy-chair. Her action was portentous and significant.
"Tell me how you found me out?" he asked, after a brief pause.
"I was dismissed from Detton Magna," she told him. "I had to go and be waiting-maid to Aunt Esther at Croydon. I took the place of her maid-of-all-work. I scrubbed for my living. There wasn't anything else. I hadn't clothes to try for the bolder things, not a friend in the world, but I was only waiting. I meant, at the first chance, to rob Aunt Esther, to come to London, dress myself properly, and find a post on the stage, if possible. I wasn't particular. Then one day a man came to see me—an American. He'd travelled all the way from New York because he was interested in what he called the mysterious Romilly disappearance. He knew that I had been Douglas' friend. He asked me to come out and identify—you! He offered me my passage, a hundred pounds, and to give me a start in life here, if I needed it. So I came out with him."
"With Dane," he muttered.
She nodded.
"Yes, that was his name—Mr. Edward Dane. I came out to identifyDouglas."
"You weren't going to give him away?" Philip asked curiously.
"Of course not. I should have made my bargain, and then, after I had scared Douglas for leaving me as he did, I should have said that it wasn't the man. And instead—I found you!"
He tapped the table with his fingers, restlessly. A new hope was forming in his brain. This, indeed, might be the end of all his troubles.
"Listen," he said earnestly, "Dane has always suspected me. Sometimes I have wondered whether he hadn't the truth at the back of his head. You can make me safe forever."
She made no reply. Her eyes were watching his face. She seemed to be waiting to hear what else he had to say.
"Don't you understand?" he went on impatiently. "You have only to tell Dane that I am neither Douglas nor Philip, but curiously like both, and he will chuck the thing up. He must. Then I shall be safe. You see that, don't you?"
"Yes, I see that," she admitted.
"Well?"
"Tell me exactly how much of Douglas' money you have spent?" she demanded.
"Only the loose money from the pocketbook. Not all of that. I am earning money now."
She leaned across the table.
"What about the twenty thousand pounds?"
"I haven't touched it," he assured her, "not a penny."
"On your honour?"
He rose silently and went to his desk, unlocked one of the drawers, and drew from a hidden place a thin strip of paper. He smoothed it out on the table before her.
"There's the deposit note," he said,—"Twenty thousand pounds to the joint or separate credit of Beatrice Wenderley and Douglas Romilly, on demand. The money's there still. I haven't touched it."
She gripped the paper in her fingers. The sight of the figures seemed to fascinate her. Then she looked around.
"How can you afford to live in a place like this, then?" she demanded suspiciously. "Where does your money come from?"
"The play," he told her.
"What, all this?" she exclaimed.
"It is a great success. The theatre is packed every night. My royalties come every week to far more than I could spend."
She looked once more around her, gripped the deposit note in her fingers, and leaned back in her chair. She laughed curiously. Her eyes had travelled back to Philip's anxious face.
"Wonderful!" she murmured. "You paid the price, but you've won. You've had something for it. I paid the price, and up till now—"
She stared at the paper in her hand. Then she looked away into the fire.
"I can't get it all into my head," she went on. "I pictured him here, living in luxury, spending the money of which he had promised me a share … and he's dead! That was his body—that unrecognisable thing they found in the canal. You killed him—Douglas! He was so fond of life, too."
"Fond of the things which meant life to him," Philip muttered.
"I should never have believed that you had the courage," she observed ruminatingly. "After all, then, he wasn't faithless. He wasn't the brute I thought him."
She sat thinking for what seemed to him to be an interminable time. He broke in at last upon her meditations.
"Well," he asked, "what are you going to say to Dane?"
"I shan't give you away—at least I don't think so," she promised cautiously. "I shall see. Presently I will make terms, only this time I am not going to be left. I am going to have what I want."
"But he'll be waiting to hear from you!" Philip exclaimed. "He may come here, even."
She shook her head.
"He's gone to Chicago. He can't be back for five days. I promised to wire, but I shan't. I'll wait until he's back. And in the meantime—"
Her fingers closed upon the deposit note. He nodded shortly.
"That's yours," he said. "You can have it all. I have helped myself to a fresh start in life at his expense. That's all I wanted."
She folded up the paper and thrust it carefully into the bosom of her gown. Then she stood up.
"Well," she pronounced, "I think I am getting used to things. It's wonderful how callous one can become. The banks are closed now, I suppose?"
He nodded.
"They will be open at nine o'clock in the morning."
"First of all, then," she decided, "I'll make sure of my twenty thousand pounds, and then we'll see. I don't think you'll find me hard, Philip. I ought not to be hard on you, ought I?"
She looked at him most kindly, and he began to shiver. Curiously enough, her very kindness, when he realised the knowledge which lay behind her brain, was hateful to him. He had pleaded for her forgiveness, even her toleration, but—anything else seemed horrible! She strolled across the room and glanced at the clock, took one of his cigarettes from a box and lit it.
"Well, this is queer!" she murmured reflectively. "Now I want some dinner, and I'll see your play, Philip. You shall take me. Get ready quickly, please."
He looked at her doubtfully.
"But, Beatrice," he protested, "think! You know why you came here? You know the story you will have to tell? We are strangers, you and I. What if we are seen together?"
She snapped her fingers at him.
"Pooh! Who cares! I am a stranger in New York, and I have taken a fancy to you. You are a young man of gallantry, and you are going to take me out…. We often used to talk of a little excursion like this in London. We'll have it in New York instead."
He turned slowly towards the door of his bedroom. She was busy looking at her own eyes in the mirror, and she missed the little gleam of horror in his face.
"In ten minutes," he promised her.
Beatrice replaced the programme which she had been studying, on the ledge of the box, and turned towards Philip, who was seated in the background. There was something a little new in her manner. Her tone was subdued, her eyes curious.
"You really are a wonderful person, Philip," she declared. "It's the same play, just as you used to tell it me, word for word. And yet it isn't. What is it that you have gained, I wonder?—a sense of atmosphere, breadth, something strangely vital."
"I am glad you like it," he said simply.
"Like it? It's amazing! And what an audience! I never thought that the people were so fashionable here, Philip. I am sitting right back in the box, but ten minutes after I have cashed my draft tomorrow I shall be buying clothes. You won't be ashamed to be seen anywhere with me then."
He drew his chair up to her side, a little haggard and worn with the suspense of the evening. She laughed at him mockingly.
"What an idiot you are!" she exclaimed. "You ought to be one of the happiest men in the world, and you look like a death's-head."
"The happiest man in the world," he repeated.
"Beatrice, sometimes I think that there is only one thing in the world that makes for happiness."
"And what's that, booby?" she asked, with some of her old familiarity.
"A clear conscience."
She laid her hand upon his arm.
"Look here, Philip," she said, "the one thing I determined, when I threw up the sponge, was that whether the venture was a success or not I'd never waste a single moment in regrets. Things didn't turn out too brilliantly with me, as you know. But you—see what you've attained! Why, it's wonderful! Your play, the one thing you dreamed about, produced in one of the greatest cities in the world, and a packed house to listen to it, people applauding all the time. I didn't realise your success when we talked this evening. I am just beginning to understand. I've been reading some of these extracts from the newspapers. You're Merton Ware, the great dramatist, the coming man of letters. You've won, Philip. Can't you see that it's puling cowardice to grumble at the price?"
He, for his part, was wondering at her callousness, of which he was constantly discovering fresh evidences. The whole shock of her discovery seemed already, in these few hours, to have passed away.
"If you can forget—so soon," he muttered, "I suppose I ought to be able to."
She made a little grimace, but immediately afterwards he saw the cold tightening of her lips.
"Listen, Philip," she said. "I started life with the usual quiverful of good qualities, but there's one I've lost, and I don't want it back again. I'm a selfish woman, and I mean to stay a selfish woman. I am going to live for myself. I've paid a fair price, and I'm going to have what I've paid for. See?"
"Do you think," he asked, "that it is possible to make that sort of bargain with one's self and fate?"
She laughed scornfully.
"There's room for a little stiffening in you, even now, Philip! No one but a weakling ever talks about fate. You'd think better of me, I suppose, if I stayed in my room and wept. Well, I could do it if I let myself, but I won't. I should lose several hours of the life that belongs to me. You think I didn't care about Douglas? I am not at all sure that I didn't care for him as much as I ever did for you, although, of course, he wasn't worthy of it. But he's gone, and all the shudders and morbid regrets in the world won't bring him back again. And I am here in New York, and to-morrow I shall have twenty thousand pounds, and to-night I am with you, watching your play. That's life enough for me at present—no more, no less. I hate missing the first act, and I'm coming to see it again to-morrow. What time is it over?"
"Soon after eleven," he told her.
She glanced at her watch.
"You shall take me out and give me some supper," she decided, "somewhere where there's music."
He made no remark, but she surprised again something in his face which irritated her.
"Look here, Philip," she said firmly, "I won't have you look at me as though I were something inhuman. There are plenty of other women like me in the world, even if they are not quite so frank about it. I want to live, and I will live, and I grudge every moment out of which I am not extracting the fullest amount of happiness. That's because I've paid. It's the woman's bargaining instinct, you know. She wants to get value…. Now I want to hear about Miss Dalstan. Where did you meet her, and how did you get her to accept your play?"
"She was on theElletania," he explained. "We crossed from Liverpool together. She sat at my table."
"How much does she know about you?" Beatrice asked bluntly.
"Everything," he confessed. "I don't know what I should have done without her. She has been the most wonderful friend any one could have."
Beatrice looked at him a little critically.
"You're a queer person, Philip," she exclaimed. "You're not fit to go about alone, really. Good thing I came over to take care of you, I think."
"You don't understand," he replied. "Miss Dalstan is—well, unlike anybody else. She wants to see you. I am to take you round after the next act, if you would like to go."
Beatrice smiled at him in a gratified manner.
"I've always wanted to go behind the scenes," she admitted. "I'll come with you, with pleasure. Perhaps if I decide that I'd like to go on the stage, she may be able to help me. How much is twenty thousand pounds in dollars, Philip?"
"A little over a hundred thousand," he told her.
"I don't suppose they think that much out here," she went on ruminatingly. "The hotel where Mr. Dane sent me—it's nice enough, in its way, but very stuffy as regards the people—is twice as expensive as it would be in London. However, we shall see."
The curtain rang up on the third act, and Beatrice, seated well back in the shadows, followed the play attentively, appreciated its good points and had every appearance of both understanding and enjoying it. Afterwards, she rose promptly to her feet, still clapping.
"I'm longing to meet Miss Dalstan, Philip," she declared. "She is wonderful. And to think that you wrote it—that you created the part for her! I am really quite proud of you."
She laughed at his embarrassment, affecting to ignore the fact that it was less the author's modesty than some queer impulse of horror which seemed to come over him when any action of hers reminded him of their past familiarity. He hurried on, piloting her down the corridor to the door of Elizabeth's dressing room. In response to his knock they were bidden to enter, and Elizabeth, who was lying on a couch whilst a maid was busy preparing her costume for the next act, held out her hand with a little welcoming smile.
"I am so glad to see you, Miss Wenderley," she said cordially. "Philip, bring Miss Wenderley over here. You'll forgive my not getting up, won't you? I have to rest for just these few minutes before the next act."
Beatrice was for a moment overpowered. The luxury of the wonderful dressing room, with its perfect French furniture, its white walls hung with a few choice sketches, the thick rugs upon the polished wood floor, the exquisite toilet table with its wealth of gold and tortoiseshell appurtenances—Elizabeth herself, so beautiful and gracious—even a hurried contemplation of all these things took her breath away. She felt suddenly acutely conscious of the poverty of her travelling clothes, of her own insignificance.
"Won't you sit down for a moment?" Elizabeth begged, pointing to a chair by her side. "You and I must be friends, you know, for Philip's sake."
Beatrice recovered herself a little. She sank into the blue satin chair, with its ample cushions, and looked down at Elizabeth with something very much like awe.
"I am sure Philip must feel very grateful to you for having taken his play," she declared. "It has given him a fresh chance in life."
"After all he has gone through," Elizabeth said gently, "he certainly deserves it. It is a wonderfully clever play, you know … don't blush, Mr. Author!"
"I heard the story long ago," Beatrice observed, "only of course it sounded very differently then, and we never dreamed that it would really be produced."
"Philip has told me about those days," Elizabeth said. "I am afraid that you, too, have had your share of unhappiness, Miss Wenderley. I only hope that life in the future will make up to you something of what you have lost."
The girl's face hardened. Her lips came together in familiar fashion.
"I mean it to," she declared. "I am going to make a start to-morrow. I wish, Miss Dalstan, you could get Philip to look at things a little more cheerfully. He has been like a ghost ever since I arrived."
Elizabeth turned and smiled at him sympathetically.
"Your coming must have been rather a shock," she reminded Beatrice. "You came with the idea, did you not, that—you would find Mr. Douglas Romilly?"
The girl nodded and glanced around for the maid, who had disappeared, however, into an inner apartment.
"They were always alike," she confided,—"the same figures, same shaped head and that sort of thing. Douglas was a little overfond of life, though, and Philip here hasn't found out yet what it means. It was a shock, though, Miss Dalstan. Philip was sitting in the dark when I arrived at his rooms this evening, and—I thought it was Douglas."
Elizabeth shivered a little.
"Don't let us talk about it," she begged. "You must come and see me, won't you, Miss Wenderley? Philip will tell you where I live. Are you going back to England at once?"
"I haven't made up my mind yet," the girl replied, with a slight frown."It just depends."
Elizabeth glanced at the little clock upon her table, and Philip threw away his cigarette and came forward.
"We must go, Beatrice," he announced. "Miss Dalstan has to change her dress for this act."
He held out his hand and Elizabeth rose lightly to her feet. So far, no word as to their two selves had passed their lips. She smiled at him and all this sense of throbbing, almost theatrical excitement subsided. He was once more conscious of the beautiful things beyond. Once more he felt the rest of her presence.
"You must let me see something of you tomorrow, Philip," she said."Telephone, will you? Good night, Miss Wenderley."
The maid, who had just returned, held the door open. Philip glanced back over his shoulder. Elizabeth blew him a kiss, a gesture which curiously enough brought a frown to Beatrice's face.
The close of the performance left them both curiously tongue-tied. They waited until the theatre was half empty before they left their seats. Then they joined the little throng of stragglers at the end.
"Your play!" she murmured, as they faced the soft night air. "I can't believe it, even now. We've seen it together—your play—and this is New York! That's a new ending, isn't it?"
"Absolutely," he confessed. "The ending was always what bothered me, you know."
She laughed, not quite naturally. She was unexpectedly impressed.
"So you're a genius, after all," she went on. "Sometimes I wondered—but never mind that now. Philip, do you know I am starving? We took exactly ten minutes over dinner!"
He led her to a huge restaurant a few doors away, where they found a corner table. Up in the balcony an orchestra was playing light music, and a little crowd of people were all the time streaming through the doors. Beatrice settled herself down with an air of content. Few of the people were in evening dress, and the tone of the place was essentially democratic. Philip, who had learnt a little about American dishes, gave an order, and Beatrice sipped her cocktail with an air of growing appreciation.
"Queer idea, this, but the stuff tastes all right," she acknowledged. "I suppose, if you were taking your dear Miss Dalstan out, you'd go to a different sort of place, eh?"
"We generally go further up town," he admitted unthinkingly.
She set her glass down quickly.
"So you do take her out, do you?" she asked coldly. "You'd have been with her to-night, perhaps, if I hadn't been here?"
"Very likely."
She was half inclined to rally him, behind it all a little annoyed.
"You're a nice sort of person! Why, it's only a few months ago since you pretended to be in love with me!"
He looked at her, and her eyes fell before his.
"I don't think there was ever much question of our being in love with one another, was there? We simply seemed to have drifted together because we were both miserable, and then, as the time passed on—well, you came to be my only solace against the wretchedness of that life."
She nodded appreciatively. For a moment the sights and sounds of the noisy restaurant passed from her consciousness.
"Do you remember how glad I was to see you? How we used to spend our holidays out in those dingy fields and hope and pray for better things some day? But it was all so hopeless, wasn't it! You could barely keep yourself from starving, and I—oh, the misery of that awful Detton Magna and teaching those wretched children! There never were such children in the world. I couldn't get their mothers to send them clean. They seemed to have inherited all the vice, the bad language, the ugly sordidness with which the place reeked. They were old men and women in wickedness before they passed their first standard. It's a corner of the world I never want to see again. I'd rather find hell! Have you ordered any wine, Philip? I want to forget."
He pointed to the bottle which stood in the pail by their side, and summoned a waiter. She watched it being opened and their glasses filled.
"This is like one of our fairy stories of the old days, isn't it?" she said. "Well, I drink to you, Philip. Here's success to our new lives!"
She raised her glass and drained it. A woman had entered who reminded him of Elizabeth, and his eyes had wandered away for a moment as Beatrice pledged him. She called him back a little impatiently.
"Don't sit there as though you were looking at ghosts, Philip! Try and remember who I am and what we used to mean to one another. Let us try and believe," she added, a little wistfully, "that one of those dreams of ours which we used to set floating like bubbles, has come true. We can wipe out all the memories we don't want. That ought to be easy."
"Ought it?" he answered grimly. "There are times when I've found it difficult enough."
She laughed and looked about her. He realised suddenly that she was still very attractive with her rather insolent mouth, her clear eyes, her silky hair with the little fringe. People, as they passed, paid her some attention, and she was frankly curious about everybody.
"Well," she went on presently, "thank heavens I have plenty of will power. I remember nothing, absolutely nothing, which happened before this evening. I am going to tell myself that an uncle in Australia has died and left me money, and so we are here in New York to spend it. To-morrow I am going to begin. I shall buy clothes—all sorts of clothes—and hats. You won't know me to-morrow evening, Philip."
His heart sank. To-morrow evening!
"But Beatrice," he expostulated, "you don't think of staying out here, do you? You don't know a soul. You haven't a friend in the city."
"What friends have I in England?" she retorted. "Not one! I may just as well start a new life in a new country. It seems bright enough here, and gay. I like it. I shall move to a different sort of hotel to-morrow. You must help me choose one. And as to friends," she whispered, looking up at him with a little provocative gleam in her eyes, "don't you count? Can't you do what I am going to do, Philip? Can't you draw down that curtain?"
He shivered.
"I can't!" he muttered.
A waiter brought their first course, and she at once evinced interest in her food. She returned to the subject, however, later on, after she had drunk another glass of wine.
"You're a silly old thing, you know," she declared. "You found the courage, somehow, to break away from that loathsome existence. You had more courage, even, than I, because you ran a risk I never did. But here you are, free, with the whole world before you, and your last danger disappearing with the knowledge that I am ready to be your friend and am sensible about everything that has happened. This ought to be an immense relief to you, Philip. You ought to be the happiest man on earth. And there you sit, looking like a death's-head! Look at me for a moment like a human being, can't you? Drink some more wine. There must be some strength, some manhood about you somewhere, or you couldn't have done what you have done."
He filled his glass mechanically. She leaned across the table. Her eyes were bright, her cheeks delicately pink.
"Courage, Philip," she murmured. "Remember that what you did … well, in a way it was for my sake, wasn't it?—for love of me? I am here now and we are both free. The old days are passed. Even their shadow cannot trouble us any longer. Don't be a sentimentalist. Listen and I'll tell you something—at the bottom of my heart I rather admire you for what you did. Don't you want your reward?"
"No," he answered firmly, "I don't!"
She shrugged her shoulders and kept time with her foot to the music. Across the table, although she kept silence for a while, she smiled at him whenever she caught his eye. She was not angry, not even hurt. Philip had always been so difficult, but in the end so easily led. She had unlimited confidence in herself.
"Don't be a goose!" she exclaimed at last. "Of course you want your reward, and of course you'll have it, some day! You've always lived with your head partly in the clouds, and it's always been my task to pull you down to earth. I suppose I shall have to do the same again, but to-night I haven't patience. I feel suddenly gay. You are so nice-looking, Philip, but you'd look ten times nicer still if you'd only smile once or twice and look as though you were glad."
The whole thing was a nightmare to him. The horror of it was in his blood, yet he did his best to obey. Plain speaking just then was impossible. He drank glass after glass of wine and called for liqueurs. She held his fingers for a moment under the table.
"Oh, Philip," she whispered, "can't you forget that you have ever been a school-teacher, dear? We are only human, and did suffer so. You know," she went on, "you were made for the things that are coming to us. You've improved already, ever so much. I like your clothes and the way you carry yourself. But you look—oh, so sad and so far away all the time! When I came to your rooms, at my first glimpse of you I knew that you were miserable. We must alter all that, dear. Tell me how it is that with all your success you haven't been happy?"
"Memories!" he answered harshly. "Only a few hours before you came,I was in hell!"
"Then you had better make up your mind," she told him firmly, "that you are going to climb up out of there, and when you're out, you're going to stay out. You can't alter the past. You can't alter even the smallest detail of its setting. Just as inevitably as our lives come and go, so what has happened is finished with, unchangeable. It is only a weak person who would spoil the present and the future, brooding. You used not to be weak, Philip."
"I don't think that I am, really," he said. "I am moody, though, and that's almost as bad. The sight of you brought it all back. And that fellow Dane—I've been frightened of him, Beatrice."
"Well, you needn't be any longer," she declared. "What you want is some one with you all the time who understands you, some one to drive back those other thoughts when they come to worry you. It is really a very good thing for you, dear, that I came out to New York. Mr. Dane is going to be very disappointed when I tell him that I never saw you before in my life…. Don't you love the music? Listen to that waltz. That was written for happy people, Philip. I adore this place. I suppose we shall find others that we like better, as time goes on, but I shall always think of this evening. It is the beginning of my task, too, Philip, with you—for you. What has really happened, dear? I can't realise anything. I feel as though the gates of some great prison had been thrown wide-open, and everything there was to long for in life was just there, within reach, waiting. I am glad, so much gladder than I should have imagined possible. It's wonderful to have you again. I didn't even feel that I missed you so much, but I know now what it was that made life so appalling. Tell me, am I still nice to look at?"
"Of course you are," he assured her. "Can't you understand that by the way people notice you?"
She strummed upon the table with her fingers. Her whole body seemed to be moving to the music. She nodded several times.
"I don't want them to notice me, Philip," she murmured. "I want you to look just for a moment as though you thought me the only person in the world—as you did once, you know."
He did his best to be responsive, but he was not wholly successful. Nevertheless, she was tolerant with his shortcomings. They sat there until nearly three o'clock. It was she at last who rose reluctantly to her feet.
"I want to go whilst the memory of it all is wonderful," she declared."Come. Here's a card with my address on. Drive me home now, please."
He paid his bill and they found a cab. She linked her arm through his, her head sank a little upon his shoulder. He made no movement. She waited for a moment, then she leaned back amongst the cushions.
"Philip," she asked quietly, "has this Elizabeth Dalstan been letting you make love to her?"
"Please don't speak of Miss Dalstan like that," he begged.
"Answer my question," she insisted.
"Miss Dalstan has been very kind to me," he admitted slowly, "wonderfully kind. If you really want to know, I do care for her."
"More than you did for me?"
"Very much more," he answered bravely, "and in a different fashion."
In the darkness of the cab it seemed to him that her face had grown whiter. Her arm remained within his but it clasped him no longer. Her body seemed to have become limp. Even her voice, firm though it was, seemed pitched in a different key.
"Listen," she said. "You will have to forget Miss Dalstan. I have made up my mind what I want in life and I am going to have it. I shall draw my money to-morrow morning and afterwards I shall come straight to your rooms. Then we will talk. I want more than just that money. I am lonely. And do you know, Philip, I believe that I must have cared for you all the time, and you—you must have cared for me a little or you would never have done that for my sake. You must and you shall care, Philip, because our time has come, and I want you, please—shall I have to say it, dear?—I want you to marry me."
He wrenched himself free from her.
"That is quite out of the question, Beatrice," he declared.
She laughed at him mockingly.
"Oh, don't say that, Philip! You might tempt me to be brutal. You might tempt me to speak horribly plain words to you."
"Speak them and have done with it," he told her roughly. "I might find a few, too."
"I am past hurting," she replied, "and I am not in the least afraid of anything you could say. You robbed me of the man who was bringing me to America—who would have married me some day, I suppose. Well, you must pay, do you see, and in my way? I have told you the way I choose."
"You want me to marry you?" he demanded—"simply marry you? You do not care whether I have any love for you or whether I loathe you now."
"You couldn't loathe me, could you?" she begged. "The thought of those long days we spent together in our prison house would rise up and forbid it. Kiss me."
"I will not!"
Her lips sought his, in vain. He pushed her away.
"Don't you understand?" he exclaimed. "There is another woman whom I have kissed—whom I am longing to kiss now."
"But we are old friends," she pleaded, "and I am lonely. Kiss me how you like. Don't be foolish."
He kissed her upon the cheek. She pulled down her veil. The cab had stopped before the door of her hotel.
"You are not to worry any more about ugly things, Philip," she whispered, holding his hand for a moment as he rang the bell for her. "You are safe, remember—quite safe. I've come to take care of you. You need it so badly…. Good night, dear!"
Late though it was when Philip reached his rooms, he found on his writing table a message addressed to him from the telephone call office in the building. He tore it open:
"Kindly ring up Number 551 Avenue immediately you return, whatever the time."
He glanced at the clock, hesitated, and finally approaching the instrument called up Elizabeth's number. For a few moments he waited. The silence in the streets outside seemed somehow to have become communicated to the line, the space between them emptied of all the jarring sounds of the day. It was across a deep gulf of silence that he heard at last her voice.
"Yes? Is that you, Philip?"
"I am here," he answered. "I am sorry it is so late."
"Have you only just come in?"
"This moment."
"Has that girl kept you out till now?" she asked reprovingly.
"I couldn't help it," he replied. "It was her first night over here. I took her to Churchill's for supper."
"Is everything—all right with her? She doesn't mean to make trouble?"
The unconscious irony of the question almost forced a smile to his lips.
"I don't think so," he answered. "She is thoroughly excited at the idea of possessing the money. I believe she thought that Douglas would have drawn it all. She is going straight to the bank, early in the morning, to get hold of it."
"What about the man Dane?"
"He has gone to Chicago. He won't be back for several days."
There was a moment's pause.
"Have you anything to ask me?" she enquired.
"Nothing."
"I have had the most extraordinary letter from Sylvanus. You and he have met."
"Yes," he admitted.
"Philip, we must make up our minds."
"You mean that you must make up your mind," he answered gently.
There was another silence. Then she spoke a little abruptly.
"I wonder whether you really love me, Philip…. No! don't, please—don't try to answer such a foolish question. Go to bed and sleep well now. You've had a trying day. Good night, dear!"
He had barely time to say good night before he heard the ring off. He set down the receiver. Somehow, there was a sensation of relief in having been, although indirectly, in touch with her. The idea of the letter from Sylvanus Power affected him only hazily. The crowded events of the day had somehow or other dulled his power of concentrated thought. He felt a curious sense of passivity. He undressed without conscious effort, closed his eyes, and slept until he was awakened by the movements of the valet about the room.
Philip was still seated over his breakfast, reading the paper and finishing his coffee, when the door was thrown suddenly open, and Beatrice entered tumultuously. She laughed at his air of blank surprise.
"You booby!" she exclaimed. "I couldn't help coming in to wish you good morning. I have just discovered that my hotel is quite close by here. Lucky, isn't it, except that I am going to move. Good morning, Mr. Serious Face!" she went on, leaning towards him, her hands behind her, her lips held out invitingly.
He set down his paper, kissed her on the cheek, and looked inside the coffeepot.
"Have you had your breakfast?"
"Hours ago. I was too excited to sleep when I got to bed, and yet I feel so well. Philip, where's Wall Street? Won't you take me there?"
He shook his head.
"I am expecting a visitor, and I have piles of work to do."
She made a grimace.
"I know I shall be terrified when I march up to the counter of the bank and say I've come for twenty thousand pounds!"
"You must transfer it to a current account," he explained, "in your own name. Have you any papers with you—for identification, I mean?"
She nodded.
"I've thought of all that. I've a photograph and a passport and some letters. It isn't that I'm really afraid, but I hate being alone, and you look so nice, Philip dear. I always loved you in blue serge, and I adore your eyeglass. You really have been clever in the small things you have done to change your appearance. Perhaps you are right not to come, though," she went on, looking in the mirror. "These clothes are the best I could get at a minute's notice. Mr. Dane was really quite nice, but he hadn't the least idea how long it takes a woman to prepare for a journey. Never mind, you wait until I get back here this afternoon! I am going round to all the shops, and I am going to bring the clothes I buy away with me. Then I am going to lock myself in my room and change everything. I am going to have some of those funny little patent shoes, and silk stockings—and, oh, well, all sorts of things you wouldn't understand about. And do try and cheer up before I get back, please, Philip. Twelve months ago you would have thought all this Paradise. Oh, I can't stop a moment longer!" she wound up, throwing away the cigarette she had taken from the box and lit. "I'm off now. And, Philip, don't you dare to go out of these rooms until I come back!"
She turned towards the door—she was half-way there, in fact—when they were both aware of a ring at the bell. She stopped short and looked around enquiringly.
"Who's that?" she whispered.
Philip glanced at the clock. It was too early for Elizabeth.
"No idea," he answered. "Come in."
The door opened and closed. Philip sat as though turned to stone. Beatrice remained in the middle of the room, her fingers clasping the back of a chair. Mr. Dane, hat in hand, had entered.
"Good morning, Miss Wenderley!" he said. "Good morning, Mr. Ware!"
Philip said nothing. He had a horrible feeling that this was some trap. Beatrice at first could only stare at the unexpected visitor. His sudden appearance had disconcerted her.
"I thought you were in Chicago, Mr. Dane!" she exclaimed at last.
"My plans were altered at the last moment," he told her. "No, I won't sit down, thanks," he added, waving away the chair towards which Philip had pointed. "As a matter of fact, I haven't been out of New York. I decided to wait and hear your news, Miss Wenderley."
"Well, you're going to be disappointed, then," she said bluntly. "I haven't any."
Mr. Dane was politely incredulous. He was also a little stern.
"You mean," he protested, "that you cannot identify this gentleman—that you don't recognise him as Mr. Douglas Romilly?"
"I cannot identify him," she repeated. "He is not Mr. Douglas Romilly."
"I have brought you all this way, then, to confront you with a stranger?"
"Absolutely," she insisted. "It wasn't my fault. I didn't want to come."
Mr. Dane's expression suddenly changed. His hard knuckles were pressed upon the table, he leaned forward towards her. Even his tone was altered. His blandness had all vanished, his grey eyes were as hard as steel.
"A stranger!" he exclaimed derisively. "Yet you come here to his rooms early in the evening, you stay here, you go to the theatre with him the same night, you go on to supper at Churchill's and stay there till three o'clock in the morning, you are here with him again at nine o'clock—at breakfast time. A stranger, Miss Wenderley? Think again! A story like this might do for Scotland Yard. It won't do for us out here."
She knew at once that she had fallen into a trap, but she was not wholly dismayed. The position was one which they had half anticipated. She told herself that he was bluffing, that it was simply the outburst of a disappointed man. On the whole, she behaved extraordinarily well.
"You brought me out here," she said, "to confront me with this man—to identify him, if I could, as Mr. Douglas Romilly. Well, he isn't Mr. Douglas Romilly, and that's all there is about it. As to my going out with him last evening, I can't see that that's any concern of any one. He was kind to me, cheered me up when he saw that I was disappointed; I told him my whole story and that I didn't know a soul in New York, and we became friends. That's all there is about it."
"That so?" the detective observed, with quiet sarcasm. "You seem to have a knack of making friends pretty easily, Miss Wenderley."
"It is not your business if I have," she snapped.
"Well, we'll pass that, then," he conceded. "I haven't quite finished with you yet, though. There are just one or two more points I am going to put before you—and this gentleman who is not Mr. Douglas Romilly," he added, with a little bow to Philip. "The first is this. There is one fact which we can all three take for granted, because I know it—I can prove it a hundred times over—and you both know it; and that is that the Mr. Merton Ware of to-day travelled from Liverpool on theElletaniaas Mr. Douglas Romilly, occupied a room at the Waldorf Astoria Hotel as Mr. Douglas Romilly, and absconded from there, leaving his luggage and his identity behind him, to blossom out in an attic of the Monmouth tenement house as Mr. Merton Ware, a young writer of plays. Now I don't think," Mr. Dane went on, leaning a little further over the table, "that the Mr. Douglas Romilly who has disappeared was ever capable of writing a play. I don't think he was a man of talent at all. I don't think he could have written, for instance, 'The House of Shams.' Let us, however, leave the subject of Douglas Romilly for a moment. Let us go a little further back—to Detton Magna, let us say. Curiously enough, there was another young man who disappeared from that little Derbyshire village about the same time, who has never been heard of since. His name, too, was Romilly. I gathered, during the course of my recent enquiries, that he was a poor relation, a cousin of Mr. Douglas Romilly."
"He was drowned in the canal," Beatrice faltered. "His body has been found."
"A body has been found," Mr. Dane corrected, "but it was in an unrecognisable state. It has been presumed to be the body of Philip Romilly, the poor relation, a starving young art teacher in London with literary aspirations—but I hold that that presumption is a mistake. I believe," the detective went on, his eyes fastened upon Philip, his voice a little raised, "that it was the body of Douglas Romilly, the shoe manufacturer, which was fished out from the canal, and that you, sir, are Mr. Philip Romilly, late art-school teacher of Kensington, who murdered Douglas Romilly on the banks of the canal, stole his money and pocketbook, assumed his identity in Liverpool and on theElletania, and became what you are now—Mr. Merton Ware."
Philip threw away the cigarette which he had been smoking, and, leaning over the box, carefully selected another. He tapped it against the table and lit it.
"Mr. Dane," he said coolly, "I shall always be grateful to you for your visit this morning, for you have given me what is the most difficult thing in the whole world to stumble up against—an excellent idea for a new play. Apart from that, you seem, for so intelligent a man, to have wasted a good deal of your time and to have come, what we should call in English, a cropper. I will take you into my confidence so far as to admit that I am not particularly anxious to disclose my private history, but if ever the necessity should arise I shall do so without hesitation. Until that time comes, you must forgive me if I choose to preserve a certain reticence as to my antecedents."
Mr. Dane, in the moment's breathless silence which followed, acknowledged to himself the perpetration of a rare mistake. He had selected Philip to bear the brunt of his attack, believing him to be possessed of the weaker nerve. Beatrice, who at the end of his last speech had sunk into a chair, white and terrified, an easy victim, had rallied now, inspired by Philip's composure.
"You deny, then, that you are Mr. Philip Romilly?" the detective asked.
"I never heard of the fellow in my life," Philip replied pleasantly, "but don't go, Mr. Dane. You can't imagine how interesting this is to me. You have sent me a most charming acquaintance," he added, bowing to Beatrice, "and you have provided me with what I can assure you is almost pathetically scarce in these days—a new and very dramatic idea. Take a seat, won't you, and chat with us a little longer? Tell us how you came to think of all this? I have always held that the workings of a criminologist's brain must be one of the most interesting studies in life."
Mr. Dane smiled enigmatically.
"Ah!" he protested, "you mustn't ask me to disclose all my secrets."
"You wouldn't care to tell us a little about your future intentions?"Philip enquired.
Mr. Dane shook his head.
"It is very kind of you, Mr. Merton Ware," he confessed, "to let me down so gently. We all make mistakes, of course. As to my future intentions, well, I am not quite sure about them. You see, this isn't really my job at all. It isn't up to me to hunt out English criminals, so long as they behave themselves in this city. If an extradition order or anything of that sort came my way, it would, of course, be different."
"Why not lay this interesting theory of yours before the authorities at Scotland Yard?" Philip suggested. "I am sure they would listen with immense interest to any report from you."
"That's some idea, certainly," the detective admitted, taking up his hat from the table. "For the present I'll wish you both good morning—or shall I say an revoir?"
"We may look for the pleasure of another visit from you, then?" Philip enquired politely.
The detective faced them from the doorway.
"Sir," he said to Philip, "I admire your nerve, and I admire the nerve of your old sweetheart, Miss Wenderley. I am afraid I cannot promise you, however, that this will be my last visit."
The door closed behind him. They heard the shrill summons of the bell, the arrival of the lift, the clanging of the iron gate, and its subsequent descent. Then Beatrice turned her head. Philip was still smoking serenely, standing with his back to the mantelpiece, his hands in his pockets. She rose and threw her arms around him.
"Philip!" she cried. "Why, you are wonderful! You are marvellous! You make me ashamed. It was only for a moment that I lost my nerve, and you saved us. Oh, what idiots we were! Of course he meant to watch—that's why he told me he was going to Chicago. The beast!"
"He seems to have got hold of the idea all right, doesn't he?" Philip muttered.
"Pooh!" she exclaimed encouragingly. "I know a little about the law—so do you. He hasn't any proof—he never can have any proof. No one will ever be able to swear that the body which they picked out of the canal was the body of Douglas Romilly. There wasn't a soul who saw you do it. I am the only person in the world who could supply the motive, and I—I shall never be any use to them. Don't you see, Philip?… I shall be your wife! A wife can't give evidence against her husband! You'll be safe, dear—quite safe."
He withdrew a little from her embrace.
"Beatrice," he reminded her, "there is another tragedy beyond the one with which Dane threatens us. I do not wish to marry you."
She suddenly blazed up.
"Because—?"
"Not because of any reason in the world," he interrupted, "except that I love Elizabeth Dalstan."
"Does she want to marry you?"
He was suddenly an altered person. Some of his confidence seemed to desert him. He shook his head doubtfully.
"I am not sure. Sometimes I think that she would. Sometimes I fancy that it is only a great kindness of heart, an immense sympathy, a kind of protective sympathy, which has made her so good to me."
She looked at herself steadily for a moment in the mirror. Then she pulled down her veil.
"Philip," she said, "we find out the truth when we are up against things like this. I used to think I could live alone. I can't. Whatever you may think of me, I was fond of Douglas. It wasn't only for the sake of the money and the comfort. He was kind, and in his way he understood. And then, you know, misery didn't agree with you. You were often, even in those few hours we spent together, very hard and cold. Anyway," she added, with a little tightening of the lips, "I am going to get my money now. No one can stop that. You stay here and think it over. It would be better to marry me, Philip, and be safe, than to have the fear of that man Dane always before you. And wait—wait till you see me when I come back!" she went on, her spirits rapidly rising as she moved towards the door. "You'll change your mind then, Philip. You were always so impressionable, weren't you? A little touch of colour, the perfume of flowers, a single soft word spoken at the right moment—anything that took your fancy made such a difference. Well—just wait till I come back!"
She closed the door. Philip heard her descend in the lift. He moved to the window and watched for her on the pavement. She appeared there in a moment or two and waited whilst the boy whistled for a taxicab, her face expectantly upraised, one hand resting lightly on her bosom, just over the spot where her pocketbook lay.