She quit.
She walked to a porthole and stared out at the dark waves shuffling past like stampeding cattle.
He apologized at once. "I'm sorry. I didn't mean it. I apologize."
"Oh, that's all right," she sighed, with doleful graciousness. But when he knelt by her and put his arm around her she slipped from his clasp and went out on the deck. He followed her. But neither of them spoke.
The moon on the sea spread a pathway of dancing whitetiles. She wanted to run away, to step forth on that fantastic pavement and follow it out of the world.
To Forbes, on a distant ship in midocean the same moon was spreading the same path straight to him. He stared into its shifting glamour till his eyes were bewitched. He could see Persis walking on the water in the boudoir cap and the shimmering thing she wore that morning.
They were thinking of each other, longing for each other, and the space between them was widening every moment.
It came over Persis with maddening vividness that she had made a ruin of her happiness. All the wealth was nothing but mockery. Even the hats and the multitudes of dresses were wasted splendor, weapons of conquest to be left in an armory.
The night grew more and more wonderful. The moon was like a white face flung back with unappeased desire. The wind across the waves tugged amorously at her hair and whimpered and caressed her. And she was with Willie Enslee, the unlovable, the hideously uninteresting, the intolerable. She was handcuffed to Willie Enslee for life.
The ache of longing that thrilled the night world thrilled Enslee's heart, too; and he crept close to her, his adoration, his wife, the only soul on earth he deeply loved. He set his cheek against hers and clenched her in his arms fiercely. And immediately he encountered that hopeless antipathy, though all she said was a faintly petulant "Don't, please!"
It struck him in the face like a little fist. He moved aloof from her in abject humiliation and thought hard, took out a cigarette, tapped it on the back of his hand, puffed restlessly, threw the cigarette over the rail, and a moment later took out another. There was no need for words. The air throbbed with Persis' detestation of the voyage. The sailing-master passed. Willie called to him:
"Svendsen!"
"Yes, sir!"
"Put about and make for home."
"I beg pardon, sir."
"You heard!"
"Aye, aye, sir."
The commands were given in the distance, a bell rang remotely in the engine-room, and the stars wheeled across the sky as the yacht came round.
The phosphorescent sea revealed the wake they had plowed in a long straight furrow of white fire, and now there was a sharp curve in the line. And shortly they were paralleling its dimming radiance.
They were bound for home. The mere thought of the word brought a tragic chuckle from Enslee's heart. Home was a word he could not hope to use. Home was a thing he must do without.
PERSIS was sorry for her husband, but just a trifle sorrier for Persis. She solaced herself with the thought that it was partly for Willie's own sake that she consented to go back, since if she stayed out in that solitude with him any longer she would go mad and jump overboard. And he would not like that in the least. A bride in town would be worth two in the ocean. Besides, a suicide on a honeymoon would be sure to cause a fearful scandal. She could imagine the head-lines.
Willie was a darling to yield so easily. It showed her how much he loved her—also how meekly he obeyed her. That is always an important question to settle. Perhaps it is what honeymoons are for—training-stations in which husbands are broken to harness and taught to answer a mere chirrup; it saves the whip.
But the comfort Persis took in finding that her husband was her messenger-boy ended as they came up the bay again. She suddenly realized that for Willie and her to be seen at the polo games, when they had so ostentatiously set out on their honeymoon only two days before, would provoke a landslide of gossip. Everybody on earth would be at the polo games, and she and Willie could not hope to escape attention. They would be ridiculed to death behind their backs and to their faces. Therefore they must not go.
She explained this to Willie, and he shook his head and broke out, peevishly:
"Why the bally hell didn't you think of all this in the first place?"
"In the first place, Willie," said Persis, "you are the man of the family, and supposed to do the thinking. In the second place, I won't be sworn at."
"I wasn't swearing at you, my love. I was just swearing. Well, if you don't want to go to the polo games, where in—where do you want to go—up to the country place?"
Here was a problem. She was sure that she did not want to be alone in a country house with Willie. That would be worse than the yacht. Since she could not endure either to be alone with him or to go among crowds with him, the dilemma was perfect. Already there was another incompatibility established.
She was mad for diversion, and, being herself a polo player of no small prowess, she was frantic to see the effort of the British team to wrest back the trophy. But a stronger passion still was the determination to evade gossip.
She and Willie, therefore, sneaked from their yacht to their house in town. They astounded the servants, and there was much scurrying and whisking.
They dined together alone, though Persis was eager to be in a restaurant where there was music. She was like a child kept in after school. She flattened her nose against a window-pane and stared out at life. After dinner the prospect of an evening with Willie rendered her desperate. They could at least go to the theater somewhere. Nobody was in town; they would be quite unnoticed. But when nobody is in town the theaters close up. There was nothing they had not seen or had not been warned against. Willie proposed a roof-garden—Hammerstein's.
They went, and beheld a chimpanzee that rode various bicycles, smoked a cigar expertly, and spat with amazing fidelity to the technique of the super-ape; also a British peeress who danced in less clothes than the chimpanzee wore.
Ten Eyck was there. He tried to hide from Persis andWillie, not because he was ashamed to be seen by them, but because he was afraid that Persis and Willie would not want to be seen by him. He had cherished no illusions for the success of the match on its sentimental side, but he had expected them to see the honeymoon through. He kept out of their sight, but they stumbled on him during the intermission, when the audience crowded into a space at the back of the roof where a patient cow was milked by electricity at an uncowly hour, and where couples rowed boats up and down an almost microscopic lake.
Ten Eyck had not expected Persis and Willie to join this hot and foolish mob. But he felt a hand seize his arm. He turned and looked into Persis' eyes. She welcomed him as a rescuer, but it was Willie that urged him to sit with them. Ten Eyck's hesitation was misconstrued by Persis. She said:
"Perhaps he is—er—not alone."
"Oh yes, I am," Ten Eyck hastened to say. "I'll join you." And he went with them to an upper box. Even Ten Eyck felt a little shy.
Persis and Willie knew what he was thinking, and they were like a pair of youngsters caught spooning. Only their misdemeanor was that they had been caught not spooning. Ten Eyck ventured to speak.
"So the penance is over already? I thought you two doves were still on the ark."
"We are, officially," said Persis.
Ten Eyck wanted to help them out, so he said:
"What's the matter? Did the yacht puncture a tire or lose a shoe or—"
Willie attempted to carry along the idea by saying:
"It was trouble with the sparker." And he did not understand why Persis blushed and Ten Eyck blurted.
They were rescued from this personal confusion by what would have thrown any audience into a panic ten years before and now was greeted almost with apathy:the appearance of the British peeress in a costume that was hardly more than Eve wore after the eviction. A gauzy shift was all she had on, with a few wisps of chiffon as opaque as cigarette-smoke. Shoulders, arms, and all of both legs were as bare as her face.
No policeman interfered, and not a sermon had been preached against her. Nudity had lost its novelty, and her posturings and curvetings were regarded with as academic a calm as if she were a trick pony or an acrobat. There was much laughter later when a male comedian burlesqued her, with a bosom composed of two toy balloons, one of which escaped, and one of which exploded when he fell on it.
"I think this age will go down in history as the return to nature," Ten Eyck said, struggling for some impersonal topic. "Women in and out of vaudeville have left off more and more of their concealments, till the only way a woman can arouse suspicion now is by keeping something on. And I can't see that we are any worse—or any better. An onion is an onion, no matter how many skins it has on or off. We'll see bathing-suits on Fifth Avenue next season."
He did not know that the next season was to bring a sudden revolution and divert women from disclosure to the covering of their bodies with chaotic fabrics till they resembled dry-goods counters in disarray.
Philosophizing did not interest Willie. He came always back to the individual. By and by he wrestled with silence, and asked:
"Er—whatever became of that—er—soldier you brought up to the farm? Stupid solemn fella—Ward—or Lord—or something?"
"Forbes, you mean?" said Ten Eyck, taking pains not to look at Persis. But he could feel her eager attention in the sudden check of her fan.
"That's it—Forbes. Still at Ellis Island—or is it Ward's?"
"Governor's," said Ten Eyck. "He's been made military attaché at the French Embassy. Sailed for Paris the other day with Senator Tait—and—and Mildred."
Persis' whole body seemed to clench itself like a hand. But Willie, everlastingly oblivious to significant things, driveled on:
"Paris, eh? Racing season's on over there now. How'd you like to run across for the Grand Prix, Persis?"
"Paris is a nice place," said Persis, with a mystic veil about her voice.
And now Ten Eyck looked at her. Their eyes met. His were angry, and hers fell before their prophetic ire. She stammered a little as she said:
"I like London better. We could make the Royal Cup at Ascot if we hurried. My sister could take care of us in the country."
But Ten Eyck slapped his knees impatiently, glared at her, and growled:
"Bluffer! Good night!"
And he was gone without shaking hands.
"What did he mean by bluffer?" said Enslee. "Doesn't he like your sister?"
"Apparently not," said Persis. "And he used to be crazy about her. She threw him overboard for 'Kelly.'"
WILLIE had arranged for supper at home. As they left the theater and sped through the streets crowded with uncharacteristic mobs Persis thought longingly of the tango-hunts she had indulged in during the past season. But there was no one to dance with her now. And she realized that she would be impossibly conspicuous as a café-hunting bride with a husband who abhorred this whole chapter in the chronicle of diversion.
Alone with Willie in the Enslee palace, which Ten Eyck described as "a sublime junk-shop," Persis was oppressed to melancholia. The air that came in at the windows had a mournful breath. The peculiar aversion for the city, that overtakes New-Yorkers in the late spring seized her and shook her. The mansions neighborly to theirs were boarded up now, with only a caretaker's window alight here and there. There was nobody even to summon by telephone as a rescuing third party to make a crowd out of the appallingly tiresome duet with Willie.
"This town is a cemetery," she exclaimed, as she quenched her eighth cigarette stump. "Opening a house here now is like opening a grave in Woodlawn at midnight. You've got to take me away or leave me in Bloomingdale."
"What about Paris?" Willie suggested.
She remembered Ten Eyck's eyes, and said, "Let's make it London."
"I'll get what I can to-morrow. You wouldn't like to cross in the yacht?" he asked, haughtily. "Isolde'sall right in the ugliest weather."
She shook her head violently, and yawned and spokeso eloquently of her fatigue that he slunk away to his own room.
The next day he set his secretary to work running down a berth on a steamer. Everything seemed to be gone. People whom the panicky times had reduced from wealth to anxiety were crossing the ocean to places where they could economize without ostentation. The final report was that the only suitable berth was the imperial suite on the newImperator.
"Did you grab it?" said Willie. The secretary shook his head.
"Why the devil didn't you?" Willie snapped.
"They ask five thousand dollars for it."
Even Willie winced at this. "I don't want it for a year," he groaned. "Just one voyage."
"It has a private deck, a drawing-room, two bath-rooms, two servants' rooms—"
The "private deck" decided Willie; but when he told Persis he laid stress on the price he paid; not from any braggart motive, but as a pathetic sort of courtship.
Persis smiled a little. It was something. But when she found the private deck she took pains to invite other passengers she knew to make it their own piazza. Among the passengers were Mrs. Neff and Alice.
After Persis had thwarted Alice's elopement with Stowe Webb the boy had been tempted to go to Mrs. Neff and plead with her to withdraw her ban, seeing that he was now a man of affairs with an assured income. But he imagined what she would say when she asked him the amount of that income; and he imagined her smile. She did not have to ridicule his fortune. The sum itself was so petty that it ridiculed itself.
He and Alice had met clandestinely a few times at the houses of friends, but both were young and both were timid, and their friends were cynical with discouragement. Alice wanted to go to watch him off at the dock, but hadnot dared, and only sent him a tear-blotted steamer letter. And while he was down in his state-room reading it she was locked in her pink-and-white virginal chamber crying her blue eyes crimson on her bed. She never spoke of him to her mother, and Mrs. Neff did not know what had become of him.
So the two child-lovers pined away. New York became a deserted village to Alice, and Stowe found the ocean a congenial waste, for he felt in his breast an Atlantic loneliness. Nor was Paris less sad; its allurements were only thorns; he felt that he must be true to his little wife-to-be, and it seemed that even to indulge in the more innocent gaieties would belie his desolation.
Then Mrs. Neff grew just a trifle too shrewd. Noting that Alice never spoke of Stowe Webb, she made up her crafty old mind that the two young wretches were meeting secretly. Since nothing happened at all, she all too cleverly decided that something was about to happen, and resolved to nip the passion-flower in the bud. She read Alice a long curtain-lecture on the perfection with which children obeyed their parents when she was young, then dilated on the advantages of European travel in broadening the mind, and drew such a glowing portrait of her own benevolence in offering Alice the opportunity of going abroad that the girl began to foresee what was coming, and what real motive was actuating her mother. By the time Mrs. Neff arrived at the heartbreaking news that she was about to drag Alice off to Paris the simple child was able to dissemble her ecstasy and give a convincing portrayal of a daughter who would rather go anywhere on earth than to France. Like Br'er Rabbit, she pleaded not to be thrown into the briar-patch of all places. So she was thrown into the briar-patch. Alice was on her way to Paris.
She took Persis into her confidence, and Persis found a dreary pleasure in the joke. She even forbore to warn Alice against the folly of marrying into poverty. Shewas not so satisfied with her own triumph as to recommend her example to others.
There was, as there will always be, a certain joy in having the best and the most expensive things of every sort. But there was, as there will always be, a disappointment in getting by merely wishing or commanding; especially as the fairy gift of wishes has always carried a few amendments: "You may have anything you wish for except—" Whereupon the "excepts" become the only things sincerely wishable.
Persis found London at the height of its June festivity. The President of France was visiting the King of England, and there were state banquets and state balls and state everything, mingled with private celebrations that rivaled them in pomp; and a horse-show, and horse-races, regimental polo tournaments; the annual hysterical wholesale celebration of nothing in particular.
Many of Persis' school-girl friends were duchesses, countesses, marchionesses, mere ladies. Lady Crainleigh, whom Persis had once beaten in a potato-race at a country horse-show in Westchester, gave a dance where seven hundred guests were present and where titles were as common as pebbles on a shore. Persis wore her "all-around" diamond crown, and danced with a Russian grand-duke and a prince or two.
The tango and the turkey-trot had spread overseas, and royalties trod on Persis' toes as they bungled the steps like yokels. It was fantastic to hear the trashy tunes of American music-halls resounding through the ballrooms of mansions and palatial hotels.
At the Royal Ascot the Queen sent a duke to fetch Persis to the royal box, and spoke amiably of her sister.
But, however Persis glittered abroad, when the inevitable time came to become mere woman and go to bed, she must always return to the nagging presence of Willie, infatuated the more by the inaccessible distances her soul kept from his.
With his harrowed face, his unwelcome caresses, his unanswerable prayers for a little love, he ceased to be tragic. He became a pest.
Persis was learning wherein wealth, as well as poverty, has its poverties, its nauseas, its petty annoyances, its daily denials, its hair-cloth shirts.
She began to feel that if she had married Forbes and made her own clothes she could not have grown wearier than she grew from putting on and taking off the complicated harnesses devised by intoxicated dressmakers.
Sometimes she declared that she would rather trim one bonnet and wear it the rest of her life than try on any more of the works of the mad hatters of Europe.
And what mockery her splendor was!—for the ulterior purpose of gorgeousness is love. Humanity has stretched its mating season throughout the whole year, but the meaning of bright plumage remains an invitation to courtship, a more or less disguised advertisement: "Behold, I am ready. I am desirable!"
Persis was dressing herself up for yesterday's party. Men courted her still, slyly and disgustingly, but she felt herself insulted by the adventure, degraded by the implications. Whatever other faults she had, Persis was not promiscuous. There was nothing of the female rake in her nature. She was meant to be loved by many and to love one. Her heart had selected its one among the ones; but the hand had married elsewhere. There was great danger for her soul if she did not meet that One. And greater danger if she did.
PARIS and London were like two rival circuses bidding for the public, beating tom-toms, blowing horns, and sending out band-wagons and parades. While Persis was wearying of the English side-shows, Forbes was tiring of the French. The wounds Persis had inflicted on his heart and his pride were still fresh and bleeding. The fever had not left him. At the thought of her, or the sight of her name frequently in the daily papers, or her portrait in the illustrated papers, the scarlet shame of his defeat still ran across his brow, still the hunger for her gripped him, regret sickened him.
Senator Tait had not enjoyed the progress of his conspiracy. For secretary he had taken Stowe Webb, who moved about like an immature Hamlet with a heart draped in black. For military attaché he had brought Forbes, whose thoughts flew backward to the past instead of scouting ahead. For acting ambassadress he had brought a daughter who, though torn away from her New York charities, found new miseries to engage her everywhere. Even on the ship she had sought distress—in the stokehold, in the steerage and the second cabin. Instead of holding hands in moonlit nooks and funnel-corners, she was taking up purses, sterilizing milk for sick babies, and selling tickets for a benefit concert.
Forbes admired Mildred profoundly, but he preferred his own sorrows to the woes she discovered in other people. Mildred liked Forbes immensely, in a motherly, elder-sisterly, trained-nursish way. But of love between them there was no visible trace.
Tait grew fonder and fonder of Forbes as a son, but he could not contrive him as a son-in-law. The mating of human hearts, he found, was a task beyond diplomacy or politics. He wondered if he would have more success in promoting affection between America and France, the two republics that made each other possible. He wished that he had never undertaken any of his tasks. He felt old, ill, tired. He had agreed to take over the Embassy on the fifth of July. Hardly more than a week remained of his freedom, and that week was the big week of the year—thegrande semaine.
He did not know that other dangers lurked in ambush ahead of himself. Mrs. Neff, ignorant of Stowe Webb's office, had come straight to Paris from theImperator, bound to expose Alice again to the Senator's inspection. More dangerous yet was Winifred Mather. Tait had been warned of Mrs. Neff, but not of Winifred.
The heavy times in Wall Street had played havoc with Bob Fielding's means and with his spirits. The gradual jolting down and down of values, and the buying public's desertion of the market left the Stock Exchange like a neglected billiard parlor, where in the absence of customers the professionals played against one another—for points.
Bob Fielding was so big that when he was happy he was a Falstaff, but when he was unhappy he was a whale ashore. Winifred liked him happy. She grew weary of her blue Behemoth and began to think again of Senator Tait. She reasoned that he really needed a wife; it was a handicap to the Embassy to have only an elder daughter to run its social branch, especially such a daughter as Mildred, with her exasperating to-morrow's virtues and her last year's clothes. Winifred felt it her patriotic duty to marry the Embassy over.
She had a widowed sister in Paris, Mrs. Mather Edgecumbe. With her as complotter and under her ægis Winifred attacked Senator Tait in a campaign so skilfully arranged under so many disguises that Tait was lefthardly a minute to himself. All his invitations included Forbes and Mildred and young Stowe Webb.
At one of them, a night fête in Mrs. Mather Edgecumbe's house in the Rue de Monceau, with musicians in Persian costume playing in the garden under the illuminated trees, Mrs. Neff and Alice were included unbeknown to Winifred. She was aghast at the tactical mistake, and she was curt enough when Alice, hastening as usual in one direction and looking in another, ran into her.
"Oh, it's you Alice. How are you? I didn't know you were in Paris. Followed the Senator over, I suppose."
"I suppose so," said Alice. "Did you?"
"Where's your mother?"
"She's probably looking for me. I hope she doesn't find me. Have you seen Stowe?"
"Somewhere," said Winifred, with a perceptible thaw. "Does your mother know he's here?"
"If she did, should I be here?" Alice giggled, and laughter bubbled from Winifred, too. It continued with increase as Alice went on: "The Senator and I have come to a perfect understanding. He knows I don't love him, and that I do love Stowe. He gave Stowe his job as a starter to get me with. Yes, he did! My awful mother, of course, is always conspiring to leave the Senator alone with me. Sends us driving and Louvre-ing together. Well, that angel man, the Senator, just waits till mama is safely out of sight, then he notifies Stowe and goes away about his business and leaves us together."
"Oh, then the Senator's devotion for you is all for Stowe's sweet sake?" and there was a rapturous little break in Winifred's voice.
"Of course. Isn't he an angel?"
"He is, indeed!" said Winifred, with a sigh of relief so deep that Alice stared at her in surprise and exclaimed:
"Why, do you really want him?"
Winifred bridled as proudly as she could, but Alice only gasped: "Heavens! here comes that awful motherof mine. Don't give me away!" And she fled from tree to tree.
There was small risk that Winifred would violate the secret left with her, and she greeted Mrs. Neff with an unprecedented smile when she swept into the arbor and found there the last person on earth she would have wished to see.
"Why, it's Winifred Mather!" was her undeniable affirmation. "So you are in Paris!"
"Yes, dear. Did you bring dear Alice to Paris with you?"
"I was just going to ask if you had seen her."
Winifred lied with the glibness of long training:
"No, indeed. But I'd love to. Let's look for her."
And she took Mrs. Neff's sharp elbow in her fat hand, and led her in the wrong direction. A moment later she whirled her away from an alley of roses where Stowe Webb was blundering along in such eager search of Alice that he would have walked into her mother but for Winifred's alertness as a chauffeuse.
"She's here somewhere," Mrs. Neff was saying as her eyes ransacked the glittering crowd. "I snatched her away from America to keep her from the possibility of meeting that young Webb."
"What a very clever idea!" said Winifred, and she began to laugh so helplessly that Mrs. Neff grew suspicious. But having no clue to work on, she changed the subject:
"Persis and Willie are here, I see."
"Are they? I telegraphed the dear girl an invitation, but I was afraid she was stuck in London."
"She came over for thePrix des Dragsto-morrow."
"How does the poor child look after—after honeymooning with Willie; Heaven help her!—and him!"
"She looks—oh, of course, she's still our dear beautiful Persis, but Willie, of course, is the same dear little dam-phool. Alice's maid, the Irish one, said Persis looked like her heart was dead in her, the creature. She had itfrom his man that Willie and she get along like the monkey and the parrot. But, of course, one can't listen to servants."
"No, of course not; though God knows what we'd do for news without 'em."
As they entered the house Mrs. Neff saw Forbes. He was in his military full dress, and he was standing alone in a reverie. He was as solitary in the crowd as if he were a statue on a battle-field gazing through eyes of bronze.
"There's our little snojer man," said Winifred.
"So it is," said Mrs. Neff, struggling toward him through a sort of panic of complexly moving groups. "How is the dear boy? Paris has swept him off his feet, eh?"
"He's the melancholiest man here—the ghost of the boulevards."
"It's too bad," said Mrs. Neff. "He was the man for Persis." She reached his side, took his hand, and laughed up into his face. He came out of a dream and stared at her foggily, then answered the warm clench of her little fingers. She said:
"And what are you staring at so hard?—Mrs. Enslee?"
He started at the name—"Mrs. Enslee?"
"Yes, Persis. You haven't forgotten her so soon?"
"Oh no, of course not. But she isn't here?"
"Oh yes, she is, with her brand-new husband."
"Really," he said, trying to sound casual, though the warning of her nearness frightened him and put his heart to its paces.
"I'll never forgive you for not marrying her after you flirted with her so dreadfully."
"Did I?" he laughed, wretchedly. "And you say she's in Paris?"
"She's right behind you."
Forbes felt as a man feels when some one says, "There's a rattlesnake just back of you." He became an automaton of wax and turned slowly as on a creakingpivot. Yes, there she was. Persis had just come in with her husband. The news, and the presence of the man at her side, sent a shudder through Forbes. The Enslees had happened upon Ambassador Tait, and Forbes could see that the old man was struggling hard to be decently polite to them.
Persis caught sight of Forbes, and her beautiful brows went up as she smiled. He had an intuition that her look was an appeal for mercy. Then she moved on with Willie, to lay off her cloak.
Tait, glancing about, saw Forbes and came to him at once. Mrs. Neff, seeing him, forgot the study she was making of Forbes' emotions. She demanded of Tait: "Have you seen Alice? I hoped she was with you."
"No, I haven't seen her to-night," he answered guilelessly, forgetting his rôle in his excitement.
"Then I must look for her. Come along, Winifred. I can't run about alone."
Winifred did not want to come along, but Mrs. Neff did not intend to leave the Senator in her clutches. She ran her arm through Winifred's and dragged her away.
Then Tait took Forbes by the arm and spoke with a curious sick thickness: "Let's get out into the air a minute."
Forbes was alarmed by his tone and by the prominence of the veins about his forehead and throat. They walked into the garden filled with soft lantern lights like luminous flowers, the moon over all and the strangely zestful air of Paris like an intoxicant. The orchestra in the garden was just finishing a tune, and the orchestra in the house was just beginning an American tango played with a marked French accent. They found a marble seat in a green niche where it was yet too early for flirts to be found.
"Well, Harvey, she's here—that damned woman—and her toy husband."
Forbes smarted under the hatred the man he loved bore for the woman he loved, and when the Ambassador,trying to be cheerful, spoke hopefully, "But, then, that flame has smoldered out, hasn't it?" Forbes only sighed:
"Oh, I think so—I hope so!"
"What's this? What's this?" Tait gasped. "Are you still at her mercy—hermercy?"
Forbes made a gesture of distress: "I don't know! The thought of her has never left me. The sight of her again hurts like the bullet I got in that first brush with the Spanish. And she doesn't look happy. There was a shadow over her."
"There ought to be," Tait grumbled. "She's a cold-blooded, mercenary, calculating—"
"Don't!" Forbes pleaded, but the old man raged on.
"She sold herself to a man she didn't love. She's to blame for—"
"The older I grow," Forbes interposed, "the less I feel that people deserve either blame or praise for being what they are or doing what they do."
"Don't waste your pity on her; she had none for you."
"It's not pity—it's—"
Tait clapped his hand to his left side and choked back a cry of distress. Forbes turned to him with an exclamation of alarm. "You ought to see your doctor."
Tait shook his head: "No, he'd only swear at me for disobeying him. I'm all right—if I can only avoid any excitement. Been going a little too hard. It's that damned dilated heart of mine. The doctor said I ought to be in bed to-night."
"Why did you come here then?"
"Oh, young Webb was afraid that Alice's mother would drag her home if she knew I was not about. But I'm a fool. This life is killing me. I ought to run down to Vichy or Evian for a few days."
"Yes; you mustn't delay any further."
"I'll go if you'll come with me, Harvey. For one thing, it will get you away from that woman."
"Oh, there's no danger from her," said Forbes. "She's married now."
Tait shrugged his shoulders: "That's when a woman is most dangerous. Young girls tied to their mother's apron-strings are risky enough, the Lord knows, but when a woman unhappily married meets an old lover who is still unmarried—humph, the weather doesn't last long as a topic of conversation. You come along with me."
Forbes felt doubly humiliated by his position. "I don't like the idea of running away from a woman."
"You're good enough soldier to know that there are times when it is cowardly not to run away. Do we go to Evian-les-Bains?"
"Yes. To-morrow, if you wish."
"Good! And I want you to promise not to see that woman at all to-night. There are a lot of sharp eyes about, and the gossips can work up a big trade on a very small capital. Will you promise?"
"You are needlessly worried."
"Harvey, I never believed in playing with fire. I haven't asked you many favors. Will you grant me this one?"
Forbes was almost filial in his obedience: "Why, of course I promise not to meet her if I can avoid it."
"Good!" Tait rose to his feet with some difficulty. He was weak and shaken with premonitions. When a man's heart races and misses fire he is filled with dismay. He paused to lay his hands on Forbes' shoulders and plead as if for forgiveness for his solicitude. "Harvey, you may think I'm an old fool, but if you didn't run away from this danger, in after years you might have been sorry that you didn't."
"I understand," said Forbes. "God bless you, I appreciate it. I shall always be grateful for all you've done for me."
"I've done nothing but make a crutch of you, used you to fill the place of my own boy. If only you could—but we won't talk of her. But if anything happens to me—"
"Nothing is going to happen to you."
"I know that, but if anything should, I—I want you to promise to take care of Mildred. She'll have money enough—and so will you. I've fixed that—but—she'll need somebody to—well, we'll talk it over at Evian. Let's go, home."
He moved on, leaning heavily on Forbes, but Winifred, seeing him about to escape, pounced on him and led him away in search of an imaginary diplomat.
Forbes, left alone, sank again on the marble bench, a prey to his thoughts. He felt that if he waited in this semi-obscurity he would not be discovered by Persis.
But she was hunting for him. She had eluded Willie, and appeared in the garden just as the Ambassador was being haled away. She paused to wait for Forbes to be alone, and at that moment her husband regained her side; she heard his voice.
"I SAY, Persis, I lost track of you in that ghastly mob. I'm sorry. By the way, wasn't that tall fella in the uniform the same Lieutenant What's-his-name that was honeying around Mrs. Neff?"
Persis was in too fierce a mood to continue that nonsense. She turned on Willie as a she-wolf turns on a terrier at her heels:
"Oh, Lord! Can't I escape you for a moment? Do go somewhere and smoke something. Or if the worst comes to the worst, drink something; but don't stand there making green eyes at me like an ape."
"Green eyes like an ape!" he echoed, stupidly. "Well, I'll be—" Then an unusual vigor of wrath stirred him. "Look here, Persis, I won't have you make fun of me. Everybody else laughs at me, even for winning you. They think you've made a fool of me, and they think you couldn't have married me except for my money. I don't suppose it could be love—nobody ever did love me. But whatever it was that made you marry me, you did marry me, and, by gad, you've got to remember it."
"There's no danger of my forgetting that," Persis snapped, frantic lest Forbes escape her. "Don't be odious! Don't make me hate you."
Willie grew the more fierce. "Well, I'd rather have you hate me than make a fool of me. I won't be laughed at—I won't."
Persis groaned with repugnance: "Oh, you've ceased to be a laughing matter to me, Willie."
Willie was about to reply in kind, but he gave her along look and, seeing how beautiful she was, grew more tender. "Everything seems to have ceased to be a laughing matter to you, Persis. What has come over you? Before we were married you were always laughing—at everything, everybody. I used to love to watch you. Even when you guyed me I didn't much mind—because there was fun in it. I used to say I'd give everything I possessed just to have you about, and see the world through your eyes. But from the time we were married you quit laughing. Hang it all, I married you to cheer me up a bit. What in Heaven's name has changed you?"
Before this weakness she relented a little. "Oh, nothing has changed me. Don't worry about me. I'm just a trifle bored with life."
"I've bought you everything you asked for, haven't I?" he asked. "Gad, your dressmaker's bills were enough. But the minute a gown came home you sickened of it. You tired of the theater, of the opera, of dancing. When I took you to the Royal Ascot you yawned as the horses came down the stretch. I bought you three new automobiles, and when we came down from Dieppe to Paris at a million miles an hour the pace scared me cold, but you—you went to sleep."
"It was soothing," she smiled.
"Soothing? Gad! do you want a bally flying-machine?"
"If it could take me to another planet."
Never dreaming how eager she was to be rid of him, he tried to please her in every manner save the one sure method of going away. He grew desperate: "Isn't there anything you want that money can buy?"
"I don't want anything that money can buy," was her dreary confession. Somehow he seemed at last to understand.
"I suppose you're just tired of me," he sighed—"everlasting me. I must be a nuisance to you. Lord knows I am to myself!"
She looked at him with suddenly gentler eyes. In contemning himself he was commending himself. The best approach to a human tribunal, as to a divine, is a humble and a contrite heart. She put out her hand to him, but he did not see it; he set off to find some one to lead him to a Scotch highball. And Persis, now that she was rid of him, was free to glide forward to the marble bench, where she could see Forbes half concealed in a grotto of shadow and a mood of gloom.
The thought of what she was about to do gave her pause. She realized the atrocity of attempting to keep Forbes in mind when she had taken such solemn vows so publicly. She must be kinder to Willie. She tried to dismiss her conscience by telling herself that it would be childish to run away from Forbes. She caught sight of Mrs. Neff hovering about with the recaptured Alice. She dreaded what interpretation Mrs. Neff would put upon her appearance in the environs of Forbes. She remembered with what fierce criticism she had always met the slightest indiscretions of other married women.
A wife's progress must be along a tight wire, and she must walk it exactly. The least step aside attracts attention and invites disaster like the inaccuracy of a Blondel crossing Niagara and carrying a man on his shoulders.
Persis hesitated, breathing hard with enormous excitement over so small a matter. While she hesitated an Italian duke who had been a little too gracious in London approached her like an erect cobra. Her skin crawled at his manner. Yet he had no worse motive than she was dallying with.
Before she could exquisitely make it clear to him that with all due deference she despised him, she saw Senator Tait hurrying toward Forbes, greeting hastily those who stopped him and thredding the increasingly mucilaginous crowd till he reached Forbes' side. Then the two men made their way out beyond the intervening mass.
Persis went back into the house and danced with theItalian duke what he called "il trotto alla turca." She was so distraite that she never knew how well he made love and how badly he danced.
Later she happened upon the surreptitious Stowe Webb, and learned that Senator Tait and Forbes were leaving Paris in the morning to take the waters somewhere—Vichy, Carlsbad, Marienbad, or Matlock; he was not sure where.
Now Persis regretted her hesitation. She had wasted a precious opportunity to warm her chilled soul with a word from the beloved lips and a look from the eyes and a pressure of the hand that were dearer than any other in the world to her.
She was amazed at her own ability to suffer so much from the loss of so little. She felt an impulse to be alone with her anguish, to huddle over the hearth where the ashes could at least remind her of how warm and cozy she once had been.
She sent for Willie, and he came with a slight elevation of manner which showed that he had found some one to arrange him at least one Scotch-and-soda.
He was demonstrative in the car and very affectionate in the elevator at the Hôtel Meurice, where they were stopping. This did not endear him to Persis.
His man exchanged a glance with her maid as they peeled off their wraps. When man and maid had been sent to bed Willie came shuffling into Persis' dressing-room where she sat staring at her doleful beauty in the mirror. He saw how listless she was, and was awkwardly eager to cheer her up. He could not have depressed her more than by trying to cheer her up. Even he realized his failure eventually and yawned sonorously:
"We're married, and I suppose we've got to stay married—for a while, at least. But I hate to see you unhappy. It's an awful slam on me to have you so blue before the honeymoon is really begun."
"Don't worry any more, Willie," she said, gently."I suppose I'm just like a child on Christmas afternoon. I always used to get blue after I'd looked over all the presents and broken most of my toys—and grown tired of the others—and eaten too much candy. And I thought, 'So this is the Christmas I've waited for the whole year long! It doesn't amount to much. I've had all that money can buy—and—and I'm too tired to sleep.'"
"I used to feel like that, too," he said. "And I remember that I usually turned back to some cheap old toy; usually it was a little lead soldier—my first love."
"First love!" she murmured.
He tried to shake off gloom as a wet spaniel shakes off water.
"Oh, I say, Persis, buck up! Don't feel like this. You're so beautiful; you're simply ripping to-night." He laid his hand on her bare arm. She started at his touch and before she realized it gasped, "Please don't paw me."
He stared at her, aghast: "Do you hate me as much as that?"
"Oh, I don't hate you, Willie! It's myself I hate," Persis cried. "You mustn't mind me; I'm just a little blue and lonely."
He laughed gruesomely. "Bride and groom together on honeymoon, and both terribly lonely! Gad! I wonder if other married couples come to feel this way when the honeymoon turns to green cheese. And do they just bluff it through? It reminds me of that chap in Hogarth'sMariage à la Mode, where the wife is yawning and the husband is sunk back in his chair in a dismal stupor. Only he was drunk—I think I'll get drunk."
He stumbled out to find his usual nepenthe. When he came back her door was locked.
PERSIS sat in grim communion with her image for hours. She faintly heard her husband's tapping on her door, and calling through it at intervals in thicker and thicker speech. But it was like a far-off rumor from a street. She was in session with herself.
She took her boudoir cap from her hair, and sat in the cascade of it peering through as from a cavern, and smoking always. She was smoking much too much, but she felt a companionship in tobacco. As she held the cap in her hand she thought of Forbes; and the remembrance was so joyous that she vowed to brave the world to get back to him.
But she pondered what the world would say of her, how it had dealt with the others that had openly defied it, and she was afraid. Then she vowed that she would take her love secretly and cleverly. She would hunt for Forbes till she met him and regained him.
Then she pictured how he would look at her when he understood. She imagined him starting back from her as from something abhorrent. She threw a cigarette-stub at her face in the mirror and gasped: "Pagh!" She could endure anything better than such cheapening of herself in Forbes' eyes. And after a while she began to think of her self-respect. She had only herself. She must keep that self precious.
Worn out at last with her silent war, she bent her head on her crossed hands and fell asleep among the fripperies of her dressing-table. These temptations in the wilderness come to people in various places. This tired butterflyfought with evil and won the duel in a boudoir in a fashionable hotel in Paris.
Hours later she woke in broad daylight and crept to bed with tingling arms and aching forehead. She did not wake again till noon. Nichette had tiptoed about her like a sentinel and had kept Willie at a distance. He discharged her a dozen times, but she simply shrugged and sniffed and answered him in French too rapid for him to follow or reply to.
When at last Persis sat up with her coffee and crescents on her knees, Nichette read to her the news in the French columns of the ParisHerald. She learned that Ambassador-elect Tait and his entourage had gone to Evian-les-Bains.
Willie came in with new plans for Persis' diversion. He suggested a visit to Switzerland and Lake Geneva. She would have liked to go to the mountains. There was something heroic in them. But Evian was closely adjacent to Switzerland. She nobly suggested Norway and Sweden. The thought of fjords and midnight suns and things was also heroic.
In the meanwhile she must make haste to dress for thePrix des Drags, and she took some interest in the choice of a gown sufficiently striking to insure success in the fierce rivalry of that great costume race.
Everybody said that the world had not seen such undressing in public since the Grecian revival at the time of the Directoire. Persis was not the least astounding figure there. She felt that, after a deed of such sacrifice as she had achieved in forswearing love, she had earned an extra license in her draperies. Willie raised a tempest about her gown, but she felt that she had done enough for him. She was suffering that morning-after sullenness which follows unusual indulgences in virtue as well as other excesses.
Life once more was a tango. She shifted from costume to costume like a dressmaker's model. She went therounds ofthés dansants, and musicales, and embassies, town houses, hotels, and châteaux, watering-places, and mountains, lakes, and seas. But she kept away from Switzerland till she read that Ambassador Tait was at his desk in Paris; and then she avoided Paris and went to Trouville.
And so the days totaled into weeks, and the weeks became a month, two, three, six. She fled from boredom to boredom. She skimmed the cream of life and whipped it, and it turned sour. Though her abiding-places were all oases and her tents were of silk, she led only a Bedouin existence. After all, she and Willie were but tramps—velvet-clad hoboes. Variety became monotony, luxury an oppression, contentment a will-o'-the-wisp.
She went to America and found that loveless contentment was not among the Yankee inventions. She went back to Europe, and it was not among the Parisian devices. There was everything for sale on the Rue de la Paix except peace. She had not come to Paris purposely to find Harvey Forbes, but she had sickened of being good, and she had grown nauseated with denying her heart. If fate willed that their communion should be renewed she would no longer tamper with destiny.
She wondered if time had cured Forbes' love. She wondered if he cared for some one else—Mildred Tait, for instance, or some Parisian witch. At the mere thought her heart beat like the wings of a wounded bird, and she knew that she loved him and always would love him.
Half a year of Willie's tempers and whinings, his indigestions and colds, and his diminishing patience with her whims, his growing habit of complaining of her extravagances, his quarrels with their servants, with every waiter, every messenger-boy, and hotel-keeper, had worn out even her courtesy. They quarreled shamelessly in private, and with less and less caution in public.
And now she was beginning to feel that she earned all she got, and was paying usury on her money, and beingbadly treated in the bargain. She was arriving at that sick frame of mind that makes cashiers and statesmen and married people unfaithful to their trusts.
This was her humor when she met Forbes again. She had tried in various ways to gain invitations to affairs of the Embassy. But Tait wasted no diplomacy on cutting out the Enslees. He was the more brutal about this since he felt that he was guarding his daughter's welfare.
Mildred had made herself dear to the more earnest elements of Paris. She had grown somewhat less of a joke to the more frivolous. The entertainments at the Embassy were not quite so Puritanical now, and her costumes had amazingly improved since her father had put her under the direct control of a tyrannical dressmaker of world-wide fame.
Whether she were growing to be merely a habit with Forbes or not, they were more and more together. They fought bitterly on the question of war, which she considered an unmitigated horror and he believed to be the loftiest form of tragedy. But the whetting of mind on mind was producing sparks, and Tait hoped that some day one of them would set their two hearts on fire.
He was preparing for that day by making Forbes less poor. His post kept him from taking advantage of the financial secrets he stumbled on. But when he put Mildred in the hands of a dressmaker he gave the financial destinies of Forbes to a retired capitalist, who juggled Forbes' five hundred dollars into a thousand in a pair of weeks; and that thousand into three. Then he encouraged Forbes to borrow, indorsed his notes and speculated with the proceeds pyramidally. He was enjoying it as a form of chess. At the end of half a year Forbes was talking as much of the Bourse and Argentines as he was of projectiles and trajectories.
Having assured Forbes of enough money in bank to give him a salubrious self-confidence, Tait dropped hints of a certain clause in his will and sat back to watch theresult. He was counting on receiving as his Christmas gift the news that Forbes and Mildred were to be married, and he was polishing up a joke about giving them inside rates on the consular fees for that complicated ceremony.
And then the Enslees came to Paris in an unusual snow-storm, and winter set in about the old man's overworked, undermined heart. He did his best to keep Persis and Forbes apart; but when were the old ever vigilant enough to thwart the young?
ONE day Mrs. Mather Edgecumbe found the Enslees shivering like a pair of waifs in a restaurant famous for its cuisine and infamous for its heating arrangements. She asked them if they were coming to thethé dansantshe was giving at her home that afternoon. They had forgotten all about it, and Persis pleaded an engagement with her doctor. Mrs. Edgecumbe was "so sorry. There would be hardly any Americans there, then, except the old faithful Ambassador and Captain Forbes."
Persis' heart warmed instantly, but she said she was afraid that she had some other engagement booked; in any case, they might drop in for a minute. She shivered with exultance and blamed it on the chill.
When five o'clock came round Persis carelessly remembered the half-promise to Mrs. Mather Edgecumbe. Willie was out of humor. Persis angelically urged him to stay in his room and nurse his cold. Her unusual thought for his welfare startled him. It delighted him. He decided to stay by her and get more of the tenderness she was lavishing to-day. She could not shake him loose.
Thethé dansantwas a failure in Mrs. Mather Edgecumbe's mind, and in her sister Winifred's heart, for the storm kept most of the Parisians away, and the Ambassador sent word by Forbes that he would be tardy if he came at all. He pleaded motives of state. But he sent Forbes with his apologies.
Forbes, having been on a visit in his official capacity, was again in uniform. His eyes and cheeks were aglow from the cold, and Persis watched him with adoration as he came nearer and nearer.
He did not see her, even when he paused to talk to Mrs. Edgecumbe, so close to Persis that she could have touched him. And when she could not endure the delay any longer, she thrust her hand beneath his eyes, and murmured: "Captain Forbes doesn't remember me, but I met him in New York ages ago."
Her voice, suddenly leaping out of the grave of memory, terrified him. He whirled so quickly that his sword caught in her gown. He knelt to disengage it, and there was laughter over the confusion, and then Mrs. Edgecumbe was called away by a new-comer, and they were left together.
Persis beamed upon the complete disarray of all his faculties, and spoke with affected raillery, though her own mind was in a seethe.
"At last we meet again! And how magnificent we are in our gorgeous uniform! It's only the second time I've seen you in it. And I believe we are no longer plain Mr. Forbes—but Captain! Captain Harvey Forbes, U. S. A.! And they say we are rich now. What a pity I didn't wait a little!"
Forbes was hurt at her flippancy. He smiled dismally, and she purred on: "I assure you your title and your wealth are vastly becoming; almost as becoming as all these buttons and epaulettes and things." She walked around him, looking him over like an inspecting officer. "Um-m! How very nice! Magnificent!"
"Oh, I beg of you—" Forbes protested, tortured with chagrin.
But she went on, "And a sword, too!" She ventured even to pull the blade a little way from its scabbard. He would have killed a man for doing that, and he almost wanted to kill Persis as she tantalized him with a strange mixture of ridicule and idolatry. "I've no doubt the boulevards are strewn with the broken hearts of Frenchwomen. Who could resist you? I'm sure my own heart isn't anywhere near healed. It wasvery cruel of you, Harvey, to throw me over and run away after you had stolen my poor young affections."
Forbes was distraught; he groaned, "I see you've not forgotten how to make fun of me."
But Persis went on in mock petulance: "It wasn't at all nice of you to cast me off just because I married Willie."
This gave Forbes a chance to return her ridicule and he asked, "By the way, how is your excellent husband?"
"You can see for yourself. There he is, still unable to learn the tango and trying to teach it to a fat Marquise."
Forbes attempted that most uncivil of tones to a woman, the ironical: "I hear that you and Mr. Enslee are the most devoted of couples."
"Oh, it's a silly custom that married people should pretend to be congenial during their honeymoon," Persis said. "Thank heaven, my initiation is almost over."
Forbes was genuinely horrified at such dealing with a subject so sacred as marriage; he forsook irony for his usual forthright utterance:
"Surely your—your husband doesn't neglect you?"
There was a touch of quick anxiety in Forbes' tone that showed how deeply he still cherished her.
"Neglect me?" Persis quoted. "If he only would! Willie does tag after me even more than I could wish; but he is growing restless. I can usually escape him by staying at home. He's doing the music-halls very thoroughly. If I can only suggest some very shockingrevueI am assured of an evening alone. He is going to one over on Montmartre to-morrow night. I shall be quite deserted. We are stopping at the Hotel Meurice."
There was so dire a meaning in her hint and so much danger in playing again with the fire whose scar he still bore that Forbes ceased fencing and slashed: "Why do you torment me? You refused my love once."
"Never your love, my dear boy," said Persis, withabrupt seriousness. "I never refused your love—only your hand. I always encouraged your love."
"But I was poor," Forbes sneered.
"Yes, you were poor," Persis said, taking his own word and turning it against him, "and I knew less than I do now." She walked away to a niche beside a statue where they could talk without being overheard, but, being visible, were chaperoned by the crowd. She sank upon a settle of gold and old rose and motioned him to her side. Then, while her face and her fan proclaimed that their conversation was of the idlest, her voice was deep with elegy:
"Harvey, try to be just. If you had been rich—oh! if you had been rich!—then, as you are now, Harvey, then I could have believed that such a thing as a love-match is feasible."
"But I was poor!" Forbes reiterated, with a knell-like persistence.
"That was Fate's fault, not mine," said Persis, in all solemnity. "But haven't I been honest with you? You declared that you loved me; I confessed that I loved you."
"Was it honest, then, not to give me your heart?"
"My whole heart has always been yours for the asking—and still is."
Forbes recoiled with a sudden: "What are you saying? You have a husband now!"
"What does that prove?" was Persis' grim reply. "I don't owe him anything in the inside of my heart. He didn't buy that, thank God! Before the world, I owe him everything, and I should be the first to abhor any open indiscretion, for my ten commandments are condensed to two: 'Don't be indiscreet!' and 'Beware of what people will say!' What more could a husband ask?"
Forbes tossed his hands in despair. He gave her up. She and her creed were beyond his understanding. "A fine code, that!"
"It is the morality of half the world, Harvey, rich orpoor, city or country," Persis declared. "The crime consists in being found out."
"Do you realize what you are saying?" Forbes demanded, eager to shield her from her own blasphemies. But she ran on unheedingly.
"Even I have a heart; and why should I play the hypocrite before you of all men? Before Willie Enslee? Yes; he is my husband. Before the gossipy world? Yes; it is the one duty I feel I owe that man. Ours was no marriage for love."
"But it was a marriage," Forbes urged, stoutly, and rose to escape.
"Yes, but after all, what is a marriage?" Persis demanded, like a Pilate asking, "What is truth?" She rose to her feet, but paused as ardor swept her headlong. "Do you think it possible for any woman to live her life out without a lover? She may cherish the memory of a dead man or a faithless man; or throw her affection away on a fool or a rake; she may keep it a secret almost from herself, but never, never, never believe that any woman can exist without some man to pay worship to."
Forbes could only attempt a weak sarcasm, "Is it impossible that a woman should love her husband?"
In a daze he fell back to his seat, forgetful that he left her standing; but she was too much engrossed with her great problem to heed this; she went on, earnestly:
"Any woman may love her husband for a little while; or in rare case for a lifetime, especially if he beats her or is a drunkard." Then her unwonted oratory on abstract subjects palled on her. She came back to the concrete instance with an abrupt, "But Harvey, Harvey, why should we be wasting time talking about love?" She bent over him, but he did not even look up at her. He shook his head helplessly.
"I wasn't bred in your world. I can't understand a thing you have said."
His aloofness of manner gave Persis a sense of loneliness,and she wailed to him as from afar, though she sank down close to him. "But can't you understand how fate has made a fool of me? I married for wealth and to cut a wide swath. Well, I have the wealth. I can cut the swath. But I've found that my ambition isn't enough, any more than your soldier ambitions were enough. Harvey, I'm lonely, terribly lonely. My heart is empty; it is like an old deserted house, and a ghost haunts it, and the ghost is—I don't have to tell you who the ghost is?"
"And you know," Forbes echoed, "what ghost haunts me."
Persis was melted by his kinship with her suffering. She leaned so close to him that her very perfume appealed to him as the perfume wherewith one flower calls to another in the noontime of desire. And she said: "Harvey, I'm going to tell you a terrible secret that I've hardly dared to tell myself: I—I crossed the ocean to find you!"
He was suffocated with longing for her, and horror of her. He gasped, "My God! on your honeymoon!"
Everywhere in that day there seemed to be a band somewhere playing a turkey-trot. There was such a band here, and such music was to be expected; but there was something whimsical about the fact that the tune this band struck up now was a rag-time version of "Mendelssohn's Wedding March."
Persis was so eager to be in Forbes' arms again, and the dance was so ample an excuse, that she smiled into his mask of horror. "We haven't danced for ever so long."
A wanton whoop of the violins swept away all such solemn things as honor, decency, duty. He rose and caught her in his embrace. It was the same girlish body, irresistibly warm and lithe. They swung and sidled and hopped with utter cynicism. The only remnant of his horror was a foolish, bewildered, muttered: "How could you?"
"Come to Paris?" she asked.
"Yes."
"Because I felt you still loved me as I still love you, and because I thought you were—perhaps—afraid."
"Afraid, eh?" He laughed, his professional soldier's pride on fire. "Well, I don't think you will find me a coward."
And he tightened his arm about her like a vise and spun her so dizzily that, though she was rejoiced by his brutality, the discretion that was her decalogue spoiled her rapture. She felt again that swoon of fear, and made him lead her back to their niche.
She did not know that Ambassador Tait had come in and had watched the vortex, was watching now with terror the look on Forbes' face and her answering smile. He could not hear their words—he did not need to. He knew what their import would be. The burlesque of the wedding music was the final touch of sarcasm.
Persis, ignorant of his espionage, sighed, "Oh, it is wonderful to be together again!"
"Wonderful," Forbes panted. "But it is in a crowd, and you are married."
"That does not mean that I am never to see you alone, does it?" she asked, anxiously and challengingly.
Forbes was still wise enough and well enough aware of his own passion to say, "But discovery and scandal would be the only result."
"Not if we were very discreet," Persis pleaded, thinking of those lonely months.
"But your husband?"
Persis uttered that ugly old truth, "If we can evade gossip abroad, we shall be safe enough at home."
And as if in object-lesson, Willie Enslee joggled up that very moment. He showed the influence of mild tippling on a limited capacity, and, coming forward, shook hands foolishly and forcibly with Captain Forbes. "How d'ye do—Mr. Ward," he drawled.
"Captain Forbes, dear," Persis corrected.
"That's right. I always was an ass about names, Mr. Ward. I haven't seen you for years and years, have we? Have you met my wife? Oh, of course you have."
Forbes was revolted. There was something loathsome about the little farce. Enslee reminded him of the clown in "I Pagliacci," and Persis, like another Nedda, was determined to finish the scene. Tucking her fan under her thigh, she said with innocent voice, "Oh, Willie, I've lost my fan somewhere; would you mind looking for it?"