When Aliette looks back on the three days that followed her lover's first avowal, she can only see herself moving in a strange, rapt exhilaration from room to room of Hector's great house in Lancaster Gate.
Hector, she realized thankfully, would be away till Monday evening: the other inmates of the house--Mollie, Caroline Staley, Lennard the butler, and his female satellites--seemed as though they had been screen-folk, flat phantoms, alive only to the eye.
Vaguely, among those phantoms, she can remember Jimmy Wilberforce, very correct in his evening-clothes, sitting between her and Mollie in the big cream-paneled dining-room.
Dinner over--Aliette remembers--she invented some pretext to leave the pair unchaperoned, and withdrew to the balcony.
It was good to be alone, alone with one's dreams--dreams that made even Bayswater Road beautiful. The road seemed a pathway of radiance. High silver edged it either side; between, the hasting car lights streamed their fans of luminous crystal. Here and there among the trees beyond, her eyes caught the orange flicker of matches, the red of kindled cigarettes.
"Under those trees," she thought, "Ronnie whispered, 'Aliette, don't hate me for loving you.'"
As though she could ever hate him!
A little breeze, blowing cool across London, ruffled her hair. Patting a scarcely displaced curl, she thought: "He kissed these fingers of mine. Another time he will kiss me on the lips. My lips shall answer his kisses."
And all those three days and nights, thought went no further. For the moment it sufficed to know one's self adored and adoring, to dream the impossible, to vision oneself untrammeled as Mollie, a virgin in bridal white standing meek-eyed before one's chosen.
But Hyde Park, of a crowded Sunday morning, is no place for dreams: rather is it an epitome of actual London. Here, all along with brown men, yellow men, black men, swathed Arabs, Poles, Czecho-Slovakians, Turks, Spaniards, 5 per cent. Americans, and even (such is the bland insouciance of London) a Bolshevik or so, foregather representatives of all the thousand castes between peer and proletarian which people Democropolis.
Not that these castes commingle! Each, as though disciplined, has its assembly-place. Aliette and Mollie, for instance, taking the diagonal path from Victoria Gate, would no more have let themselves intrude upon the communistic sanctum near Marble Arch, than the fulminating prophets of social equality and unlimited class-warfare would have dared invade the stretch of turf and gravel by the Achilles statue which custom reserves for "church-parade."
"We really ought to have gone to church first," said Mollie.
"Ought we?" answered an absent-minded sister.
Aliette's thoughts were very far from church. That morning, alone in the bow-windowed library among the heavy pictures and the heavier books, she had tried to be her old self again, to reason out the whole issue involved by Ronnie's declaration. But her reasoning had been all confused, baffled, and confounded of the emotions.
One fact only, as she now saw, had emerged star-clear from her hour of introspection: the fact that she loved Ronnie. And she had no right to love Ronnie! She was a married woman. Socially, and in the eyes of the law, she belonged to Hector.
Walking, she tried to delude herself. Perhaps the love was all on her side; perhaps her dreams would endure, bringing no reality.
But even the momentary delusion did not endure. Peremptorily her heart assured her of Ronnie's devotion, of its permanence. Irrevocably she knew that, sooner or later, the whole issue would have to be faced.
The two sisters walked on, silent in the sunshine, till they came to the assembly-place of their caste. There, still silent, they sat them down under the trees.
All about them, some seated, some strolling, were other well-groomed people. Beyond the low-railed turf, a compact, orderly crowd sauntered four deep along the sidewalk. Beyond them, occasional cars, occasional carriages drew up to disgorge fresh arrivals.
"Morning!" said a man's voice. Aliette, who had been entertaining a stranger's Pekingese with the tip of her unfurled parasol, looked up; and saw James Wilberforce.
James Wilberforce asked if he might sit with them, and took the answer for granted. "Fine day for cutting church," he grinned, as he arranged his hefty bulk, his striped trousers, his top-hat (which shone with a positive mating splendor), his "partridge" cane, and his buckskin gloves in the appropriate poses. "Been here long?"
"No," Mollie answered. "We've only just come."
"Seen anything of Cavendish?"
"Not so far, Jimmy."
"Expect he and his mater'll be along pretty soon. I'm lunching with them at Bruton Street."
"Are you?"
And suddenly Aliette panicked. "I wish I could bolt," thought Aliette. "I ought to bolt. He mustn't catch me here, in public, undecided. I wish I hadn't come. I might have known he'd be here. Oh, why didn't I reason things out to a finish this morning?"
Nor was Aliette Brunton the only one to panic! Ronald Cavendish, walking with his mother from Down Street to Hyde Park Corner, felt equally unsure of himself. He, too, after three days of rapt exhilaration, after three nights during which the one predominant thought had been, "She yielded her hand, she loves me," had tried to face the issue deliberately.
But deliberation seemed utterly to have deserted him. Consecutive thought was impossible. Between him and thought shimmered the radiant face of Aliette, the wide, unstartled, tender eyes of Aliette, the yielding fingers of Aliette as he raised them to his lips.
They turned out of Piccadilly into the park.
"A weak sermon," said his mother.
"I'm afraid I didn't listen very carefully."
"So I perceived." Julia, covertly examining her son, saw that he looked pale, agitated. His dress, stereotyped enough in conception, betrayed a certain carelessness: the tie had been hastily knotted, a button was missing from one of the gloves. She felt, rather than knew, that he resented her company.
Mother intuition alone made Julia conscious of that resentment. But psychology, the long training of an astute mind, led her instinctively to the root of it. "Some woman or other," she decided. "Nothing else could make him resentme." And she remembered, with an acute pang of jealousy, his affair with her sister's child, Lucy Edwards. Had it not been for her, Ronnie would have married Lucy. She could not regret having prevented the match--marriages between first cousins, whatever the church might say about them, ought not to be encouraged. Nevertheless, if Ronniehadmarried Lucy, he would at least have married a known quantity. Whereas now, for all Julia knew, he might have fallen in love with a divorcée.
For undoubtedly love must be the cause of his mental trouble. No other emotion had ever made him resentful of her company. Moreover, why should he be troubled if the girl were eligible?
"I think we'll cross now," she said, trying not to feel hurt. "It may be cooler under the trees."
He gave her his arm across the road; and as they threaded their way, still arm in arm, through the saunterers, Julia Cavendish, bowing to various acquaintances, forgot her hurt in sheer maternal pride--a pride which had not diminished by the time that James Wilberforce came over to detain them from strolling.
Watching those three make their way through the sunlit crowd, Hector Brunton's wife felt the social sense desert her.
This creature, dressed so like its fellows that its fellows scarcely turned to regard it, was her man, her Ronnie. He, and he alone among the crowd, could move her to emotion. She could feel the limbs under her silk frock trembling to his approach. And suddenly, desperately, she hated the crowd; seeing it a living barrier between them. If only Ronnie could take her up, there and then, in his arms; if only he could carry her away, away from all these futile people. All the people about her grew blurred, unreal. She could see clearly only one face, the serious blue-eyed face of her man.
"How do you do?" said the voice of Julia Cavendish. And a moment afterwards, as she and Ronnie shook hands, reality and social sense alike came back to the mind of Aliette Brunton.
She found herself sitting pleasantly in the park, surrounded by pleasant people. She knew a great many of these people: but best of all she knew the man beside her. "Poor Ronnie!" she thought. "He doesn't know what to say for himself. He feels awkward. It is rather an awkward moment. I'd better make conversation." And she began to make conversation in her calmest, most charming social manner, with Ronnie's mother, inquiring about her health.
"Oh, but I'm really quite well," protested Julia. "A little overworked, perhaps. At least, so the doctors say. Personally I haven't much faith in doctors. But I'm taking their advice, and knocking off for a month or so."
"Does that mean that we aren't to expect a novel this autumn?"
"I'm afraid so." The authoress laughed to herself. It was so like "the public" to imagine that novels were written in a few months, between May and July, for publication in the autumn.
But abruptly, even while she was still laughing to herself, Ronnie's mother grew aware of trouble. Her mind sensed drama: a drama actually in progress; here; close beside her. This "charming woman," this Mrs. Brunton, radiated, despite her charm, an aura of tension, of the acutest mental tension. Meanwhile Ronnie had hardly opened his mouth since they sat down. For the next ten minutes Julia Cavendish also "made conversation."
"Almost time we were getting a move on; it's past one o'clock," interrupted James Wilberforce--and precipitated crisis.
For that this was crisis, a definite thought-crisis, each of the participants in it--Julia, Aliette, Ronnie--recognized as they rose to their feet. Behind their conventionally smiling faces seethed minds so violently perturbed that to each it seemed impossible for thought to remain unbetrayed.
"This is the woman," thought Julia Cavendish. "This is the woman whom Ronnie loves. Somehow I must save him from her. Somehow I must save them both. Otherwise it means ruin, absolute ruin. Disgrace!"
But no thought of ruin troubled the lovers.
"I can't let him go like this," thought the woman. "I can't lose him. I must speak. I must say, 'Ronnie, Ronnie, I don't hate you for loving me.'"
And the man thought: "I wonder if sheishating me. I wonder why she's so reserved, so aloof. I must find out. I must have a word with her. Just one word--alone."
And he had his word, the barest whisper as their hands clasped: "May I telephone you to-night?"
Only the tiniest pressure of Aliette's gloved fingers gave consent.
"It was the mater who insisted on my having a telephone," thought Ronnie. "The mater who furnished this room for me."
He looked round the room--at the Chippendale settee, the bookcases, the eighteenth-century engravings on the beige wall-paper. Looking, his heart misgave him.
The mater! He owed her so much in life. And now--now he was contemplating, more than contemplating, making definite, absolutely definite, a decision of which she could never approve, which might even cost him her love.
The mater! Ever since that moment of crisis in Hyde Park--through luncheon, through the rainy afternoon which followed luncheon, over the dinner she had insisted on his sharing--Ronnie had been watching her face, speculating about her, wondering what she would say if she knew. Now suddenly it seemed to him that she did know.
He tried to put the idea out of mind. But fragments of their conversation--fragments which memory could only imagine to have been hints--kept recurring to him. She had spoken--and this was rare with her--about his father; about a recent matrimonial shipwreck; about her article in the "Contemplatory." And not once, after Wilberforce left them, had she mentioned--Aliette!
The Chippendale clock on the mantelpiece gave a preliminary wheeze, and began chiming ten o'clock. At the sound, misgivings vanished. She--not his mother, but Aliette, Aliette, the very thought of whose name made the pulses hammer in his head--must no longer be kept waiting.
For a moment the shining black of the telephone fascinated Ronnie's eyes; for a moment, as one meditating a great decision, he stood stock-still. Then impulsively he lifted the receiver from its hook.
To his imaginative mind, the telephone became instrument of their fate. Waiting for the call, he saw, as one mesmerized, all their past, all the possibilities of their future; forgetting, in that mesmeric instant, his mother, the law, Brunton, everything in the world except the vivid of Aliette's hair, her deep brown eyes, the poised exquisite slenderness of her.
And an instant later he heard her voice. It came to him, very clear, very deliberate, across the wires:
"Is that you?"
"Yes."
"You're very late."
"I'm sorry. I didn't get away from Bruton Street till nearly ten. Are you alone?" Ronnie hated himself for that question: it sounded almost furtive. But Aliette's answer was the very spirit of frankness.
"Yes. I'm quite alone. In the library. Mollie's gone to bed. Why do you ask?"
"Because--there's something I want to say to you--Aliette." He paused a second, mastered by emotion; then again he said: "Aliette?"
"Yes--Ronnie."
"You're not angry with me--about Thursday?"
"No." It seemed to him that he could almost see her lips move. "No. I'm not angry--with you: only with myself."
"You know----" He hesitated. "You know that I love you."
"Yes, I know that." A little laugh. "It doesn't make things any easier for me, does it?"
"I want to see you again. Soon. May I?"
For a long time, the wire gave no answer. At last, very faintly, as though she were thinking rather than speaking, Aliette whispered: "This isn't playing the game."
"I know that. I've tried----" He could not bring himself to finish the sentence.
"Oughtn't we to go on--trying?"
"No." Now the man could actually vision her. It was as though she were in the room. Passion--banishing hesitancy--had its way with him. "Aliette! I can't go on living if I don't see you again. I've got to see you. Soon. To-morrow. You will meet me, to-morrow, won't you! I can't bear the thought of another three days without you."
Hesitancy returned, banishing passion. "I've offended her," he thought. "She's rung off." But after an interminable silence, Aliette answered:
"Where do you want me to meet you?" Then, faint again, and very shy: "I've got--we've got--such a lot of things to say to one another. Hadn't we--hadn't I--hadn't it better be in your rooms? I could come to you to-morrow afternoon. At about five o'clock. Would that do?"
"Aliette--dear----"
Before Ronnie could collect his wits for a further reply, he heard a whispered "Good night," and the click of a replaced receiver.
To a certain type of mind, the woman who goes to a man's rooms is already labeled. It seems therefore necessary to explain that Aliette--when she suggested going to Ronnie's--acted on no passionate impulse, but as the result of a whole afternoon's deliberation. It was, she felt, vital that they should have speech together; and equally vital that their speech should not be disturbed. Wherefore--fastidiousness revolting alike from a clandestine appointment in Hyde Park or at her husband's house--she chose the courageous alternative.
Now, however, as she strolled quietly down Bond Street at half-past four of a sunlit Monday afternoon, Aliette did not altogether succeed in bridling the fears with which both sex and training strove to stampede her mentality.
She had to say to herself: "How absurd I am! These are the nineteen-twenties; not the eighteen-sixties. Even discovered, I run no risk of scandal." Yet scandal, she knew subconsciously, was the least of the risks she ran in going to Ronnie.
Nevertheless, go she must: even if--worst risk of all--he had misunderstood her motive. The issue between them could not be shirked any longer. Rather a desperate issue it seemed as, at the corner of Conduit Street, Aliette ran into Hector's father!
Rear-Admiral Billy, having arrived at his club two hours since, was taking his first "cruise round." The old man looked the complete Victorian in his white spats, his "Ascot" tie, his braided morning-coat and weekday topper. But his "sponge-bag" trousers were Georgian enough.
"Well met, my dear." he greeted her. "Your old father-in-law's dying for a pretty woman to pour out his tea."
She let him rumble on; accepted his compliments about her hat, her lace frock, her parasol; but refused his offer of a taxi to Ranelagh.
"I'm so sorry, Billy. But I'm going--I'm going to tea with some one else."
"That be blowed for a tale," laughed the admiral. "You're coming with me. If Ranelagh's too far, we'll make it Rumpelmayer's."
He took her arm; and she began to panic. Billy, in his "on the spree" mood, could be very persistent. A few yards on, however, they met Hermione Ellerson. She too, declared the sailor, "must have a dish of tea with an old man."
Aliette seized on the opportunity with a quick:
"Be a dear, Hermione. Take Billy to Rumpelmayer's for me."
"You'll give me strawberries and cream--whatever they cost?" pouted the ex-plaintiff in Ellerson v. Ellerson.
"Give you anything you want," rumbled Rear-Admiral Billy. "Alie's going to meet her best boy; so we'll leave her out of the party."
Aliette, on the pretext of shopping, managed an immediate riddance of the pair. Watching them walk off together, she felt rather guilty. Yet the guilt held a certain spice of pleasure, of pride. She was on a dangerous errand, taking risks. She was going--in risk's despite--to Ronnie.
Her heart began to throb in anticipation of Ronnie. Passing a mirrored window, she glanced at her reflection, and saw herself well turned-out,en beauté. The sight gave her keenest satisfaction. She walked on, no longer fearful but excited--violently, tremulously excited--till she came to Piccadilly; and turned right-handed toward St. James's Street. But the clock of St. James's Palace told her that it still lacked more than a quarter of an hour to their rendezvous.
She turned back again; stood a full minute in admiration of Rowland Ward's trophies; debated with herself whether she should drop into Fortnum & Mason's or dawdle at the book-counter in Hatchard's; decided against both schemes; lingered to examine the Harrison Fisher drawings in the display-window of "Nash's Magazine"; examined the diamond watch at her wrist; and nearly bolted down the Little Arcade into the narrow Londonishness of Jermyn Street.
Here again she felt the need for courage; felt as though the whole place--the church under the tree, and the public-house at the corner, the shops and the restaurants--held spies. The street, after broad Piccadilly, seemed furtive, sunless, a street of danger. She wanted to avert her head from the passers-by.
By the time Hector Brunton's self-possessed wife reached the dark-green Adams door of 127b Jermyn Street, she was as nervous as any other woman in the same equivocal position.
But Ronnie's name-plate, the sedateness of the house, and above all the trim gentleman--obviously a retired butler--who answered her tremulous ringing, did more than a little to restore her confidence.
"Mr. Cavendish? Mr. Cavendish is at home, madam. He is expecting guests." (Aliette could have blessed Moses Moffatt for that final "s.") "Allow me to show you the way up, madam."
She followed the restorer of confidence up two dark flights of well-carpeted stairs; and found herself on a half-landing. The white door on the half-landing was just ajar.
"Whom shall I announce, madam?" asked the trim gentleman.
Aliette hesitated the fraction of a second before replying: "Mrs. Brunton, Mrs. Hector Brunton."
Moses Moffatt opened the white door, and they passed into the hall of Ronnie's flat. Automatically Aliette noticed--and admired--the black grandfather's clock, the one engraving, the beige wall-paper. Then her cicerone knocked on polished mahogany; and a voice, Ronnie's voice, called, "Come in."
Moses Moffatt opened the second door; announced the visitor in his best style; and withdrew. They heard the click of his final exit as they faced one another--she still in the doorway, he at the tea-table by the fireplace.
For a moment, social poise deserted them both; for a moment they could only stare--brown eyes into blue, blue eyes into brown. Then, her sense of humor conquering shyness, Aliette said: "Youwereexpecting me, weren't you?"
"It seems too good to be true." Ronnie moved across the room towards her; took the hand she proffered; and raised it to his lips. At that, she felt shy again. Confidence deserted her. If he failed in this first test; if, by one word, he betrayed misunderstanding; then, indeed, she would have irretrievably demeaned herself. But Ronnie released her hand after that one kiss; and said, very simply: "I oughtn't to have let you come."
Relieved, and a little touched at his words, Aliette let him take her bag and parasol.
"I didn't mean you to have tea for me," she said, pulling off her gloves. "Shall I pour out?"
"I'll have to boil the kettle first," he stammered, fumbling in his pocket for matches. "You'll sit here, won't you! I--I've so often imagined you sitting here and pouring out tea for me--Aliette."
"Have you--Ronnie?" Laughter dimpled her cheeks. She let him lead her to the settee by the tea-table; and sat watching his struggle with the refractory wick. "Why don't you have an electric one? They're so much easier."
"Are they?" How shy he seemed!
"Rather!" She imagined herself infinitely the more at ease. "I like this room."
"I'm so glad. It isn't my taste, you know."
"Really?" As if she hadn't guessed whose taste had chosen that beige paper, thoseécruvelvet curtains with their flimsy lacebrise-bise, the Aubusson carpet, and the plain silver tea-service on the Chippendale tray!
He did not pursue the subject; and for that reticence her heart went out in thankfulness to him. Yet, at best, his reticence could only be a temporary respite: before she left this room which his mother had furnished for him, the whole issue must be discussed. And the issue--as Aliette well knew--depended, more than on any one else, on Julia Cavendish.
Yes! The whole issue, not only as it affected themselves, but as it might affect others, must be threshed out before she left him. Only--only--this respite was very sweet. Why couldn't life be just one long tea-time! She felt so unutterably happy. A sense, almost a sensuousness, of well-being pervaded her. She wanted no more than this: to be with Ronnie; to hear his voice; to watch his lips, his eyes, his hands as they poured from silver kettle to silver pot; to answer, quietly, impersonally, his quiet impersonal questions.
She thought how boyish he looked; how unlike Hector he was in his courtesy, his delicacy. Till suddenly, watching him across the table, she grew conscious of tension in him, of passion. And on that, this business of pouring out his tea, of accepting his cakes, turned to sorriest of farces. She wanted him beside her, close to her; she wanted to hear him whisper, "Aliette, I love you"; she wanted to whisper back, "And I love you, Ronnie. I've loved you ever since that first day."
All else she had meant to say seemed positively futile.
Meanwhile, to Ronnie, it seemed incredible that he should find the courage to tell her his thoughts; incredible that this vivid, radiant creature, alone with him in the intimacy of his own dwelling-place, should be willing to listen to them. Then, without warning, thought broke to words.
"All the same, I oughtn't to have let you come."
"Why not? I--I wanted to."
"Because----" The fire in his eyes blinded her. She heard, as through the maze of sleep, steady tick-tick-tick of the clock on the mantelpiece, sizzle of the kettle-flame, the hoot and drone of traffic from the street below. She heard, as a sleeper awakened, the throb of her own heart. She felt tears, tears of sheer joy, close to her eyes.
"Because?" she whispered back.
"Because I love you. Because I can't trust myself with you. Because you're"--he was on his feet now--"because you're not mine. And I want you to be mine."
"Ronnie! Ronnie!" Still mazed, she stretched out a hand to him. He seized her hand; and pressed it to his lips, to his eyes.
"Aliette--my dearest--sweetest--I'm behaving like a cad to you. I----"
Speech died at his lips; he stood before her, tense, tongue-tied--her hand held, like a shield against her beauty, before his eyes. She knew passion kindling in her, kindling them both to madness; knew the flames of desire a-leap between them; knew the overpowering impulse to immolate herself in the flames of desire.
"My dear," he whispered, "my dear."
Then, as in a dream, she divined that the flames leaped no more, that he had mastered passion, that he had fallen to his knees, that he was covering her hand with kisses. "Forgive me," she heard, "forgive me. I'm not that sort of cad. I didn't think, just because you came to my rooms----"
"Don't, don't." Her free hand fondled his hair. "You mustn't kneel to me. Please, please----"
He rose, her hand still in his; and she drew him down beside her.
"Ronnie----" She would have looked into his eyes, but his eyes avoided her. "Ronnie, I don't want you to think, either now or ever, that it's caddish of you to--to love me. I--I need your love. I need your love more than I can ever tell you." His hand trembled at her words. "I'm very lonely, and I'm afraid--I'm afraid that I'm very weak. You're the only person in the world who can help----"
"Then----" His eyes turned to hers, and she saw hope light in them. "Then, youdolove me."
"Yes. I love you." She laughed--a little strained laugh that was almost a caress. "I oughtn't to say that, I suppose."
"Oh, my dear"--now he had prisoned both her hands--"why shouldn't you say it? No--no harm shall ever come to you from me."
"I know that." Her voice grew almost inaudible. "Otherwise--I shouldn't be here."
"No harm shall ever come to you from me," he repeated--and fell silent.
They sat for a while, hand in hand, taking quiet comfort from one another, each knowing what must next be said, each fearful of being first to speak. At last, releasing her hands, Aliette braced herself to the ordeal.
"About"--fastidiousness almost overwhelmed her--"about my--my husband. You understand, don't you, that he--that he isn't my husband any more--that otherwise I would never have come to you--that, that it's been all over between him and me--for, for ever so long."
"Yes, dear. I--I understand." Very slowly, he drew her toward him. His eyes no longer blinded her; looking deep into the blue of them, she saw only a great comprehension, a great reverence. "I should have understood--even without your telling me." Very slowly, she yielded to the pull of his hands; yielded him her lips. Very clearly she knew herself--as they swayed to one another in that first kiss--his woman.
Again, it was a while before either spoke. Then Ronnie said, speaking as simply as any boy:
"I wish I knew what was the right thing to be done. I can't give you up. Not now! Tell me, if you were free--would you marry me?"
"You know that I would." She, too, spoke simply of the things in her heart. "But I'm not free. We're neither of us free."
"You mean that--that I'll have to give you up?"
Again she braced herself. "I--I'm afraid so."
"Why?"
"Because of----" She could not yet bring herself to mention his mother. "Because of your career."
"My career!" He laughed, holding her in his arms. "As if my career had anything to do with it. I'm only a poor devil of a barrister, living on the charitable briefs of Jimmy Wilberforce. It's you, your reputation that counts, not mine."
"I can't let my love bring you harm." She withdrew from him--her eyes still suffused with happiness; her lips still quivering from his caress.
"Never mind me. It's you we have to consider. In law you're--you're still your husband's. Unless he lets you divorce him."
"He'd never do that."
"Why not? It's lawful. It's done every day."
"Even if he would--I couldn't. It wouldn't be playing the game."
"Aliette"--stubbornly, Ronnie rose to his feet,--"I--I want you so much that nothing else seems to matter. But I can't--I won't ask you to--to do the other thing. You talk about playing the game. What's the alternative? If you divorce your--your husband, he won't suffer. Nobody cares what a man does. But the other thing--the other thing's all wrong----"
His words chilled her to fear. But she knew that she must master fear--even as he had mastered passion.
"Are you--are you so sure?" said Aliette. "Can love, real love, ever be wrong?"
He turned on her bluntly, almost rudely. "Yes, the whole thing's wrong. It's wrong of me to let you come here. Wrong of me to love you." Then, his reserve breaking down: "I've tried to reason this thing out till I've grown nearly mad with it. I've always loved my profession; always thought that a lawyer's first duty was to obey the law. But now, loving you, the law doesn't seem to count. Only you count. You and your happiness. It's only you I'm thinking of, not my--my rotten career."
Once again he fell on his knees to her, protesting, incoherent; once again he took her in his arms; and kissed her, very tenderly, on her eyes, on her half-closed lips. His kisses weakened her.
"Ronnie," she whispered. "My Ronnie, I love you so."
Her whisper kindled him again to passion.
"Aliette," he said hoarsely, "Aliette, I can't give you up. I can't live without you."
For a moment she yielded herself; for a moment her lips, her hands, her whole body clung to their happiness; for a moment all her fears, all her self-torturings were stifled. Then she broke from him; and her eyes grew resolute.
"Ronnie, there's some one whom neither of us has considered--your mother."
"The old cannot stand between the young and their happiness." His eyes, too, were resolute. "We're still young, you and I. We've all our lives to live. And besides"--he weakened,--"the mater likes you."
"She'd hate me if I didn't make you give me up."
"You don't know her, dear."
"I do." It seemed to Aliette as though her lover were indeed only a boy. "I know her a thousand times better than you ever will. Mostly because I'm a woman; and a little, perhaps, because I love her son. Shewouldhate me. And--and she'd be right."
"Nobody could hate you," he broke in. "Nobody who knew the fineness of you."
"I'm not fine." She put away the joy of his words. "I'm just a very ordinary person. There's nothing fine in me--except perhaps my love for you. And, for your sake, I mustn't let that love blind me to the truth. Can't you see what my freedom--however I won it--would mean to your mother?"
She waited for him to answer; but he sat obstinately silent--his hands clasped about his knees, his eyes on her face. She went on:
"Your mother doesn't believe in divorce. It's against her principles, her religion."
"But surely, if he lets you divorce him----"
"I could never do that. Not now. It would be just--just hypocrisy. And we can't hurt your mother. We mustn't. I don't care about myself. If I thought it were for your happiness, I'd run away with you to-night. But I'm afraid for your career. And I do care, terribly, about makinghersuffer. Think of the fight she's put up, all her life, against this very thing; and then, try to think what it will mean to her, to both of you, ifyou, her son, her only son----"
He interrupted violently.
"She would have no right, no earthly right to interfere."
"Oh, don't, don't speak like that about her." There were tears, tears of real sorrow, in Aliette's eyes. "I can't bear it. I--I can't bear to think of coming between you. It isn't fair. She's loved you all her life. You're everything in the world to her. And then--then--oh! can't you understand----"
He strove to kiss away the tears; but her hands covered her face from his kisses. He knew himself all one weakness at thought of this hurt in Aliette. And weakening, it seemed to him as though Julia Cavendish were here in the room with them; as though he said to her: "Mater, this is my one chance of happiness. I can't let even you take it from me."
The vision passed; and he knew himself strong again. His hands parted Aliette's fingers; he kissed her on the closed eyelids, on the wet cheeks. She clung to him, tearful still. Her lips murmured:
"Life is so difficult--so terribly difficult."
He said to her: "We mustn't make it more difficult. We love each other. We must be true to love. Nothing else matters. As long as you are mine----"
"Iamyours. Only yours. You don't doubt me?"
At that the last of Ronnie's scruples vanished. Fiercely, crudely, he strained her to him. "Aliette, Aliette, my own darling, don't ask me to give you up. I can't give you up! I couldn't endure life without you. Come to me! We needn't do anything mean, anything underhand. It's for your happiness--for my happiness----"
"Ronnie--Ronnie----"
Her lips were fire on his cheeks. The perfume of her was a fire in his mind. Her arms were chains, chains of fire about his body. He crushed her to him; crushed her mouth under his lips. Her whole body ached for him, ached to surrender itself. A sharp pang as of hatred went through her body: she hated him for the thing he would not do; hated herself for the longings in her body.
"You hurt me, you hurt me." With a sharp cry she broke herself loose from him. "I thought I was so strong. And I'm weak--clay in your hands."
She stood up, trembling; feeling herself all disheveled, abased.
The flame under the kettle had gone out. The tea had gone cold in their half-empty cups. The street below still hooted and droned with traffic. The clock still ticked from the mantelpiece.
"I ought to be going," she said, eying the clock.
"Yes." He, too, had risen: he, too, was trembling. "You ought to be going. It's nearly half-past six. But you'll come to me again. You'll come again--Aliette."
He found her gloves, her bag and parasol. Taking them, she knew that her hands had lost their coolness; little pearls of emotion moistened either palm. Her face, seen in the mirror over the mantelpiece, looked strangely flushed--different. For the flash of a second, her fastidiousness was in revulsion.
"You'll come again--soon?" he repeated.
"I don't know." Revulsion passed; but her hands, straightening her hat, shook as though in self-disdain. "Somehow, it doesn't seem fair--on either of us."
"But you must." His voice thrilled. "You must. We can't leave things like this--undecided."
Self-possessed once more, she faced him. "Don't try to hurry me, Ronnie. We've talked too much this afternoon. My brain's weary. I can't decide anything. I thought that, being with you, things would be easier. They're not. They're more difficult. You must give me time----"
"Then"--his voice saddened--"I haven't been any help to you?"
A laugh rose in her throat, dimpling it. "I'm afraid we're neither of us very wise; but"--she offered him her ungloved hand--"it's been very sweet, being with you. That's why--you haven't helped me very much."
Silently, hating that she must go, he released her fingers. She was all a wonder to his eyes, all a riddle to his brain. He wanted to say: "But you mustn't go. You're mine, mine. I don't care a damn for your husband, for my career, for my mother, for the law. Stay with me. Stay with me to-night."
Actually, he forebore even to kiss her good-by!
Aliette had been gone an hour. . . .
Moses Moffatt came in. Moses Moffatt cleared away the tea-things. Moses Moffatt asked: "Will you be dining at home, sir?" Some one answered, "No!" Moses Moffatt went out.
Aliette had been gone two whole hours. The some one became Ronald Cavendish.
He found that he must have been smoking cigarettes--one cigarette after the other. Ash and paper smoldered on the silver tray at his side. The room stank of tobacco. But tobacco could not drive away that other perfume--the perfume of Aliette's womanhood.
She had been in this very room! The essence of her still pervaded every nook of it. His imagination conjured up the image of her: Aliette dimpling to laughter: Aliette's brown eyes, now bright with joy, now dimmed with tears: the vivid of Aliette's hair: the little gestures of Aliette's hands. All these he saw, and possessed again in memory.
Again she lay in his arms. Again she let him kiss the tears from her eyes. Again she yielded him her hands, her hair. But she had yielded him more than these; she had yielded him her very thoughts: she had said, "I'm very weak; you're the only person who can help me."
Remembering those words, he grew ashamed. He must not think for himself: he must think for her. She had said that she would marry him if she were free. But there was only one way to freedom--unless Brunton let her divorce him. And that alternative she had refused to contemplate.
No! There was only one path to her freedom, to their happiness--the path of scandal. Dared he demand that sacrifice from her?
After all, why not? The scandal would be short-lived--the happiness enduring. She was Brunton's merely in name. She had no children. Legally, they might have to put themselves in the wrong; but morally they would be justified. Between them and happiness stood only the shibboleths.
Nevertheless, the shibboleths mattered. Shibboleths were the basis of all society.
Certain people, too--people like his mother,--hated divorce, believed it wicked. His mother still clung to the old faith. His mother would say: "God joined Aliette and Hector in holy matrimony. You have no right to sunder God's joining."
As though humanity were any deity's stud-farm!
By that strange perversity which is peculiar to loving womanhood, Aliette's first thoughts--as the taxi rattled her away from Jermyn Street--were for her husband.
For the second time in three years her mood relented. "Poor Hector!" she thought. "He'll be home when I get back. It isn't much of a home for him--ours."
Yet, even relenting, she knew that she could never forgive. The physical Hector was dead, killed by her knowledge of his infidelities--as dead to her as the physical Ronnie was alive.
Then she forgot Hector, remembered only Ronnie. Her memory thrilled to his caresses. She began to yearn for him with a bodily yearning so acute that--had he been beside her in the taxi--she would have thrown her arms round his neck.
Her mind whirled. This way. That way. She, Aliette Brunton, who had always thought "that sort of thing" the prerogative of shop-girls and chorus-ladies, was yearning, physically, for a man. It was all wrong. She should never have gone to his rooms. They must part. She would never be parted from him. He ought never to have made love to her. She would have died if he had not made love to her!
She tried to blame herself for her weakness; she tried to think: "I made no struggle. I yielded everything. I virtually threw myself at his head. I should have been strong. I should have denied him my hands, my lips." But her heart refused to be blamed; her heart said: "He loves you. You love him. Nothing else matters."
The taxi swung into Bayswater Road; and instinctively Aliette opened her vanity-bag. Glancing at her face in the mirrored lid, she remembered Hector again. Hector mustn't see her as Ronnie had seen her. Hector mustn't find out!
Once more, she felt abased. Once more her fastidiousness revolted--this time from concealment. The commonplace impulse--to confess--appeared, disappeared. What was there to confess? Nothing!
Nevertheless, paying her driver, mounting the pillared door-step, ringing as she let herself into the square tessellated hall, Aliette felt guilty. In thought, if not in act, she was little better than the husband whom Lennard, appearing from his lower regions, announced to be in the library.
Caroline Staley joined Lennard in the hall. Aliette handed her gloves, her bag and parasol to the maid; asked Lennard the time; heard it was a quarter past seven; hesitated the fraction of a second; and pushed open the library door.
Hector sat in his big leather armchair by the bow-window--the "Evening Standard" on his knees, and a glass of whisky and water at his elbow. His gray eyes lit pleasurably at sight of her. As he came across the room with a smiled "My dear, how well you're looking," Aliette realized with the shock of a sudden revelation the cruelty latent in those thin lips.
(Shewaslooking well, thought Hector; her very best. This evening, that subtle incomprehensible process, process alike mental and physical, which he had divined at work in her for so long, seemed to have attained its completion. Her very complexion showed it.)
"Am I?" she answered.
He gave her the cheek-kiss of connubial compromise; and she schooled herself not to shudder. "This is the price I must pay," she thought, "for those other kisses."
The front-door bell rang; and, a minute afterwards, Mollie rustled in.
"Hello, Hector," said Mollie. "So you've got back."
The girl's eyes were all luminous, subtly afire with happiness. Kissing Aliette, she whispered, "I must talk to you."
To Brunton, watching the sisters go arm in arm through the door, came a sharp pang of sex-consciousness. As Aliette, so Mollie: from each there radiated that same incomprehensible aura of physical and mental completion. The aura excited Brunton, stimulated him, roused his imagination almost to mania. All the way home in the car--and usually the car distracted him--he had been thinking of his wife, goading his mind with the mirage of the past. Now the prongs of the goad penetrated through the mind to the very flesh.
He poured himself another drink, and stood for a long while in contemplation of a photograph on his desk; a photograph of Aliette, taken just before they became engaged. He remembered how then, as always, her fastidiousness had lured him; how then, as now, he had ached to conquer her fastidiousness, to make her desires one with his own. And always, from the very outset to this very day, he had failed. Against the refinement in her, even when she yielded, his will to sex-mastery beat in vain; till finally there came the break.
The break, as Hector saw it, had been of her making. The things he most desired of her, the unfastidious intimacies, she either could not or would not endure. Those intimacies she had driven him elsewhere to seek. And he had sought them for three years; sought them, he now realized, without assuaging his desire.
Dressing for dinner, he heard--from the room she had barred against him--his wife's voice. His wife and her sister were talking, talking. The incomprehensible talk maddened Hector, even as the incomprehensible physical aura of them had maddened him. Surely--surely it was high time to put an end to this--this nonsensical chastity.
Her sister's dressing-hour confidences seemed to Aliette the final complication. Mollie had met James Wilberforce, by accident, in Bond Street. Although too late for tea, he had insisted on her eating an ice at Rumpelmayer's. At Rumpelmayer's they ran into the admiral and Hermione. The admiral had spoken of his meeting with Alie.
"Where didyouhave tea?" asked the girl.
"Never mind about my tea," retorted her sister. "Tell meyournews."
Whereupon Mollie, not in the least hesitantly, told it. Jimmy had asked her to marry him! That is to say, he had spoken about marriage in such a way as to leave no doubt about his intention to propose. That was one of the admirable things about Jimmy. He never beat around the bush. She, of course, had "choked him off." Jimmy must be taught that these things couldn't be fixed up over an ice in a tea-shop.
"Still," concluded the modern young, "I'm very fond of James. The chances are that I shall marry him in the autumn."
"And James Wilberforce," thought Aliette, as she went down to dinner, "is justtheperson whose wife's family must besans reproche!"
Dinner completed her mentalbouleversement. Hector--she divined even before they sat down--was in a difficult mood. Hector insisted on champagne, insisted on their sharing it. He grew boisterous on the first glass. "They would have a cheery evening," said Hector. "They would get the car round after dinner, and drive to Roehampton." But on Aliette's suggesting that he and Mollie should go alone, he dropped both the scheme and his pose of boisterousness. Catching the look in his eyes, she began to be frightened.
Only twice before--once after her first discovery of his infidelities, and once a year later--had Aliette seen that particular look in Hector's eyes. It betokened contest. Not the casual entreaties of recent months, but contest--contest almost physical! Formerly, though resenting the indignity of such a contest, she had never dreaded it. But to-night--to-night was different.
When Lennard brought in the port, Hector refused to be left alone. They stayed with him while he drank two glasses; and again, watching him, Aliette's mood relented. The look in his eyes had grown soft, almost pleading. "Poor old Hector," she thought; "so many women could have given him all that he requires from a wife. Only I--I can't. I'm Ronnie's--Ronnie's."
Once more her mind whirled. This way. That way. Guilt, fear, love, uncertainty drove the wheels of her mind.
Yet both mind and body possessed one certainty: that the physical Hector had died three years since.
It was late, nearly midnight; but Mollie still sat strumming on the piano in the big balconied drawing-room.
Ever since dinner began the girl had been conscious of domestic tension. She could see, over the shining instrument, that neither husband nor wife listened to the music. They sat, either side the fireplace, avoiding speech, avoiding each other's eyes.
Occasionally, when he thought himself unobserved, Hector would glance at Alie. Mollie knew, of course, that Alie didn't get on very well with Hector. On more than one of her visits to them there had been such periods of tension. But this--to the girl's intuition--seemed far more serious, far nearer definite crisis than anything before. Somehow the situation frightened her; somehow she felt averse to leaving Alie alone with Hector. All the same, one couldn't go on playing ragtimes till dawn.
Mollie fired a final rafale on the bass keys, and closed the piano.
"I'm going to bed," she announced. "You too, Alie?"
"Not just yet." Aliette kissed her sister good night. During the last two hours her relenting mood had almost evaporated under the fire of Hector's covert glances. Her mind no longer whirled. She knew now--definitely--that contest between them was unavoidable; and, though she still dreaded it, her courage refused to postpone the ordeal.
The door closed behind Mollie; and, after a moment's hesitancy, Hector leaned forward from his chair. Aliette saw that there were pearls of sweat on his forehead. His hands gripped the blue grapes of the cretonne chair-cover as though he would squeeze them dry.
"I'm glad she's gone to bed," he said hoarsely.
"Are you? Why?"
"Because it's time that you and I had things out with one another."
"What things?" Her voice sounded a little shy, but she no longer averted her eyes. They met his--brown cold and resolute, against gray kindling to passion.
"Everything. Aliette," he began to plead with her, "we can't go on like this for ever."
"Why not?"
"Because the whole position's intolerable. Either you're my wife, or you're not. I--I can't stand this sort of life."
"What sort of life?"
"You know perfectly well what I mean. Aliette," he pleaded again, "can't we make a fresh start--to-night?"
She felt her whole heart turning icy to him as she answered: "We threshed that matter out a very long time ago. I can see no use in referring to it again."
"Possibly you can't." Hector rose. Her very aloofness urged him, despite better judgment, to immediate mastery. "But you're not the only one to be considered. As your husband, I have certain rights."
"If you have, I shouldn't advise you to try and enforce them."
The words sounded calm enough; but there was no calm in Aliette's heart. Suddenly she grew conscious that the sense of rectitude which had sustained her for three years sustained her no longer. In thought she had descended to her husband's level. Her cheeks flushed.
"Why shouldn't I enforce them?" The flush did not escape his eye. Perhaps, after all, she was no different from other women, from the women who liked one to be forceful. He made a movement towards her. "Why shouldn't I enforce them?" he repeated.
"Because you have no rights." Even his blurred judgment knew better than to touch her. "Because you forfeited them--three years ago."
"That old affair," he muttered sullenly; and drew away from where she sat. Then, excusing himself, "Renée's in Australia. She's been in Australia two years. I paid her passage----"
Proudly, coldly, Aliette answered him back: "I hope you do not discuss your wife with your mistresses in the same way that you discuss your mistresses with your wife."
The cold pride weakened him. "You're very harsh. I made a mistake--three years ago. I admitted it at the time. I admit it once more. I've made--other mistakes. But that's all over. You're a woman, a well-bred woman. You can't understand these things."
Three days since she would not have understood; now, understanding a little, she relented again.
"Hector--I'm very sorry. But it's--it's impossible."
He came toward her again; bent down, and tried to take her hand. She drew it away from him. The overwhelming physical hunger of his eyes worried her. His feet, on the white rug, showed suddenly enormous, grotesque--grotesque as his affection.
"Why is it impossible?"
She thought how often she had asked herself that same question; knew that--in Ronnie's arms--she had at last found the answer; knew that she must lie. And she hated lying. Yet more than lying she hated the knowledge that her body, which had lain in Ronnie's arms, should be cause of that overwhelming hunger in Hector's eyes.
She said quietly, "Must we go over all this old ground again?" And since he did not answer: "It does no good. I don't want to hurt you more than I can help. Won't you just leave things as they are? Won't you believe me when I tell you that it's just--impossible?"
His legal mind, suddenly active, caught at the pleading note in her voice; fastened on it. "You're very solicitous, apparently, about my feelings?"
For a second, wondering if he could suspect, she grew fearful. Then, putting away fear, she rose and faced him. The flush had gone from her cheeks; her eyes--aloof, impersonal--told him the utter hopelessness of his cause. And with that knowledge came suspicion--a suspicion formless as the first shadow-haze of storm in a brazen sky.
"I don't wish to hurt you," she reiterated. "But the thing you ask is out of the question; and will always be out of the question. Even the discussion of it offends me."
He took a step towards her; but she did not recoil.
"Aliette--do you realize the meaning of what you've just said?"
"Perfectly." Her eyes met his, beat them down.
"And what do you expect me to do under the circumstances?" Again suspicion came to him; and with suspicion, anger at his own impotence. "You're not a child. You know perfectly well what happens to a man whose wife refuses to live with him. I've never pretended to be a saint: I've left that to you."
"Hector!" Temper clenched her fingers. Her whole fastidiousness revolted against the man, against the topic he would not relinquish.
"I'm sorry if you're shocked"--all his cruelty wanted to shock her, to see her fastidiousness in degradation--"but I'm trying to tell you the truth--just for a change. If you persist in your saintliness, there's only one course open to me. Another Renée! A man can't live without a woman. It isn't fair to his nature. It isn't healthy."
"Healthy!" she burst out.
"Yes. Healthy. Does that upset you?"
Her eyes blazed as she answered: "How dare you talk to me like that? How dare you? Healthy! I suppose that was your idea when you marriedme. You took me--medicinally."
"Aliette!" Her fury cowed the cruelty in him. "I married you because I loved you. I love you still."
"Love!" Her cheeks kindled. Caution was ripped loose from her as a sail is ripped loose by the wind. The shreds of it flapped against her mind, infuriating her. That this man who might have been father of her children should cloak his lusts with that divine word, seemed the ultimate defilement. "Love!" Her breasts heaved. "Don't talk to me of love. Talk of your rights, of your health, if you like; but spare me the degradation of what it pleases you to call your love."
At that, definitely, the lawyer in Brunton suspected. Black thoughts drove and drove, thunder-cloud-like, across the sky of his mind; and through the rifts in those thunder-clouds his mind saw two visions--his wife, infernally desirable, infernally distant from the reach of his desires, and a woman to be probed, a hostile witness for cross-examination.
"You speak as though you were an authority on the subject," he sneered; and, as she deigned no answer, "a saintly authority."
"You're insolent." The last shred of her caution parted. "Insolent."
"Perhaps"--his voice dropped two full tones--"I have the right to be insolent."
"Explain yourself, please."
He came so close to her that she could see every pore in the skin of his face. "I should hardly have thought an explanation necessary. I said, 'Perhaps I have the right to be insolent.' It is for you to explain why"--his lips worked--"you regard 'what I am pleased to call my love for you' as a degradation."
"And if I refuse to explain?"
"There is only one conclusion to be drawn."
"And that is?" she dared him.
Abruptly, Brunton the lawyer became Brunton the husband. He no longer wanted to cross-examine; he wanted to possess--to possess this woman. Why should he not possess her? She was as much his as the furniture in his home, the books in his chambers. By law and by religion, she owed him her body. He had always been chivalrous to her; he had always tried to fall in with her whimsies, to be kind.Shehad never been kind. All she had tried to do was to hurt him.
"And that conclusion is?" she flung at him.
God! How much she could hurt him. God! How he wished to spare himself. He wanted her so; his whole body ached for her little hands, for her lips, for the touch of her hair. Why should she thus goad him? Even if--even if she had cared--virtuous women did care sometimes, platonically of course--for somebody else, he could forgive her.
He did not want, even, to forgive. He only wanted to know nothing. He only wanted her to be kind to him, to let him love her--in his own way. Without all this--all this fuss.
But her eyes refused him kindness; her lips demanded their answer. She maddened him with her rigid lips, with her blank unfriendly scrutiny.
"Your conclusion, please, Hector?"
"Since you insist," the words seemed torn from the man's throat, "the conclusion I draw is that--you're in love with somebody else."
He had expected indignation, furious abuse, furious denial; anything but the deadly calmness with which she answered: "And supposing there were somebody else? What right would you have to object?"
Aliette saw Hector recoil as though she had struck him; saw rage, incredulity, fear, apprehension, chase in scarlet chaos across his face. His thin lips writhed--as though in torment. But she could feel no pity for his torment. In her eyes, he was the beast, the defiling beast: defeated, he yet stood, shifty on those great feet of his, between her and happiness, between her and her chance of motherhood, between her and--Ronnie.
"Well," she shot at him, "what right would you have to object?"
"I should have the right," he stammered, "the right that any husband possesses. But you're not serious. For God's sake, tell me you're not serious. I haven't been such a bad husband to you. I haven't deserved this----"
Suddenly she remembered Ronnie's words: "Unless he lets you divorce him. Why not? It's done every day." Suddenly she remembered Hector's own words, the speech he had insisted she should read after the Ellerson case.
"You're not serious," he challenged.
"I'm perfectly serious. Please answer my question. And before you answer it, let me remind you of something you said in public not more than a fortnight ago. You said: 'A woman on marriage does not become her husband's property.' I want to know if you still abide by that question."
"And I"--rage mastered the apprehension in him--"I want to know, definitely, if thereisanybody else."
Her lips pursed to silence. She could almost see Ronnie--and her silence was all for him. For herself she had no fear, only the violent instinct to be free, to be free at any cost, from Hector Brunton.
"Answer me!" He almost shouted at her.
Quietly, she answered, "There is nobody else--in the way you mean."
"Will you swear?"
"You have my word. If that's not enough for you----"
The unfinished sentence tortured him. He saw himself alive, tormented; her as a statue of fate, unmoving, cold by his cold fireside. If only she would make some movement--not stand there like a statue: her lips rigid, her hands taut, every line of her body tense under the frozen draperies.
"I don't doubt your word," he said sullenly.
"Then answer my question. Do you regard me as your property or not? If I asked you for my freedom, would you give it to me?"
"You mean--let you divorce me?"
For a moment, aware of hypocrisy, Aliette hesitated. Then she said, "Yes."
"On what grounds?"
"Your infidelities."
"My infidelities!" He laughed, his legal mind seeing the whole strength of his position. "You have no proof of them. And even if you had, infidelity by itself is no ground for divorce. Besides"--his cruelty could not forbear the blow--"you've condoned them."
"Condoned them! I?"
"Yes. You. By not leaving my house. By continuing to live with me."
"That's untrue. I've never lived with you, since--since I found out."
"You'll never make the world believe that."
"What do I care about the world?"
"Aliette"--for the last time he forced himself to plead with her,--"think of my position, our position. Even if it were legally possible, you wouldn't ask me----"
He continued to plead till he felt utterly worn out, utterly beaten; till it seemed to him that he had been arguing with her--arguing uselessly--for hours. And all the time he argued, one thought nagged at him: "Thereissomebody else. There must be somebody else. I must find out who he is."
"Then you refuse," she was saying. "You refuse me my freedom. You go back on your own words."
She, too, felt worn out. She could not even hate the man, because she had no right to hate him. At least--Mollie's words about James Wilberforce came into her weary mind--Hector had not beaten around the bush. He had been straight-forward enough; whereas she--she was not being straight-forward, was not playing the game. But the instinct to be free did not abate its violence.
"Very well"--the cross-examiner in Brunton urged him to the playing of his last card,--"I won't go back on my words. I'll admit the justice of everything you've said. You shall have your freedom." Her eyes lit; and his suspicion became certainty. "I'll arrange everything. There need be very little scandal; only the usual fake--a suit for restitution of your conjugal rights. You'll get an order of the court, an order for me to return to you. You needn't worry, I sha'n't comply with it. After that----"
He broke off, watching her. Her face had softened, renewed its coloring. Yet she was nervous. She fidgeted ever so slightly, first on one white-shod foot, than on the other.
"But before I consent, there's one condition I must make; one question I must ask you." His voice grew stern, became the voice of the K.C. "Before I take any steps in this matter, I must have your assurance, your definite assurance, that you are not asking for your freedom with a view--with a view"--he hesitated--"to marrying any one else."
The blood ebbed from Aliette's cheeks: it seemed to her that her heart had stopped beating. This was the test! One downright lie--and she might win to freedom. That issue she saw clearly. But she saw another issue--the issue between herself and Ronnie. Even though Ronnie himself had suggested that she should divorce Hector, his suggestion--she knew--had implied telling Hector the truth. Surely Ronnie would be the first to reject freedom won at such a price.
And, "I've got to play the game," cried the soul of Aliette; "otherwise, even my love for Ronnie becomes a degradation." Yet, still, instinct cried in her for freedom.
The decisive seconds lengthened; lengthened; stretched, taut as piano-wire, into the eternities. The scene imprinted itself, sharper than sharpest snapshot, on unfading memory. Always, burnt into memory, would remain Hector, his sandy hair awry, his thin lips parted under the bulbous nose, his jowl set; would remain herself, torture-pale on the rack of indetermination; would remain the light white room, blazing with electrics, the stripes of its wall-paper upright as prison bars. No freedom from that prison--save at the price of truth!
But at last, truth spoke.
"I cannot give you that assurance, Hector," said Hector's wife.
About her, the snapshotted scene trembled, shivered and broke to whirling fragments. She was conscious of Hector's hands, itching to take her by the throat, of Hector's feet, of the red fury in Hector's eyes. His hands itched to strike her. If he struck, she would strike back--madly, through those whirling fragments.
But Brunton could not strike; he could not even speak. The insanity of balked desire dumbed his mouth as it numbed his limbs. Nature, fighting like a wild beast, wrenched at the cage of his self-control. He could hear nature wrenching ape-like at his ribs, howling to him: "Kill! Kill both! Kill both the man and the woman!" The blood-lust and the sex-lust were knives in his loins.
"You!" he stammered. "You, you----" Then his hands ceased their itching, and the red in his eyes flickered out, smoldering to gray.
She heard his great feet go creaking across the room, creaking through the doorway, creaking up the staircase. She heard the slam of an upstairs door. She heard herself whisper to the wide-eyed distraught woman who peered out from the mirror over the mantelpiece: "That leaves only one way--only one way to freedom."