"There's Cardiff," said a man who saw him taking his ticket. "More than ever the _joli garcon!_"

An hour and a half later one of the somewhat unprepossessing set of domestics attached to the Mansion Hotel, Cheynemouth, undertook to deliver Mr. Lawrence Cardiff's card to Miss Bell. She didn't remember no such name among the young ladies of the Peach Blossom Company, but she would h'inquire. They was a ladies' drawin'-room upstairs, if he would like to sit down. She conducted him to the ladies' drawing-room, which boasted two pairs of torn lace curtains, a set of dirty furniture with plush tr.i.m.m.i.n.gs, several lithographs of mellow Oriental scenes somewhat undecidedly poised upon the wall, and a marble-topped centre-table around which were disposed at careful intervals three or four copies of last year's ill.u.s.trated papers. "You can w'yt'ere, sir," she said, installing him as it were. "I'll let you know directly."

At the end of the corridor the girl met Elfrida herself, who took the card with that quickening of her pulse, that sudden commotion which had come to represent to her, in connection with any critical personal situation, one of the keenest possible sensations of pleasure. "You may tell the gentleman," she said quietly, "that I will come in a moment." Then she went back into her own room, closed the door, and sat down on the side of the bed with a pale face and eyes that comprehended, laughed, and were withal a little frightened. That was what she must get rid of, that feeling of fear, that scent of adverse criticism.

She would sit still 'till she was perfectly calm, perfectly accustomed to the idea that Lawrence Cardiff had come to remonstrate with her, and had come because--because what she had been gradually becoming convinced of all these months was true. He was so clever, so distinguished, he had his eyes and his voice and his whole self so perfectly under control, that she never could be quite, _quite_ sure--but now! And in spite of herself her heart beat faster at the antic.i.p.ation of what he might be waiting to say to her not twenty steps away. She hid her face in the pillow to laugh at the thought of how deliciously the interference of an elderly lover would lend itself to the piece of work, which she saw in fascinating development under her hand, and she had an instantaneous flash of regret that she couldn't use it--no, she couldn't possibly. With fingers that trembled a little she twisted her hair into a knot that became her better, and gave an adjusting pat to the fluffy ends around her forehead.

"Nous en ferons une comedie adorable!" she nodded at the girl in the gla.s.s; and then, with the face and manner of a child detected in some mischief who yet expects to be forgiven, she went into the drawing-room.

At the sight of her all that Cardiff was ready to say vanished from the surface of his mind. The room was already gray in the twilight. He drew her by both hands to the nearest window, and looked at her mutely, searchingly. It seemed to him that she, who was so quick of apprehension, ought to know why he had come without words, and her submission deepened his feeling of a complete understanding between them.

"I've washed it all off!" said she naively, lifting her face to his scrutiny. "It's not an improvement by daylight, you know."

He smiled a little, but he did not release her hands.

"Elfrida, you must come home."

"Let us sit down," she said, drawing them away. He had a trifle too much advantage, standing so close to her, tall and firm in the dusk, knowing what he wanted, and with that tenderness in his voice. Not that she had the most far-away intention of yielding, but she did not want their little farce to be spoiled by any complications that might mar her pleasure in looking back upon it. "I think," said she, "you will find that a comfortable chair," and she showed him one which stood where all the daylight that came through the torn curtains concentrated itself. From her own seat she could draw her face into the deepest shadow in the room. She made the arrangement almost instinctively, and the lines of intensity the last week had drawn upon Cardiffs face were her first reward.

"I have come to ask you to give up this thing," he said.

Elfrida leaned forward a little in her favorite att.i.tude, clasping her knee. Her eyes were widely serious. "You ask me to give it up?" she repeated slowly. "But why do you ask me?"

"Because I cannot a.s.sociate it with you--to me it is impossible that you should do it."

Elfrida lifted her eyebrows a little. "Do you know why I am doing it?" she asked.

"I think so."

"It is not a mere escapade, you understand. And these people do not pay me anything. That is quite just, because I have never learned to act and I haven't much voice. I can take no part, only just--appear."

"_Appear!_" Cardiff exclaimed. "Have you appeared!"

"Seven times," Elfrida said simply, but she felt that she was blushing.

Cardiff's anger rose up hotly within him, and strove with his love, and out of it there came a sickening sense of impotency which a.s.sailed his very soul. All his life he had had tangibilities to deal with. This was something in the air, and already he felt the apprehension of being baffled here, where he wrought for his heart and his future.

"So that is a part of it," he said, with tightened lips.

"I did not know."

"Oh, I insisted upon that," Elfrida replied softly. "I am quite one of them--one of the young ladies of the Peach Blossom Company. I am learning all their sensations, their little frailties, their vocabulary, their ways of looking at things. I know how the novice feels when she makes her first appearance in the chorus of a spectacle--I've noted every vibration of her nerves. I'm learning all the little jealousies and intrigues among them, and all their histories and their ambitions. They are more moral than you may think, but it is not the moral one who is the most interesting. Her virtue is generally a very threadbare, common sort of thing.

The--others--have more color in the fabric of their lives, and you can't think how picturesque their pa.s.sions are.

One of the chorus girls has two children. I feel a brute sometimes at the way she--" Elfrida broke off, and looked out of the window for an instant. "She brings their little clothes into my bedroom to make--though there is no need, they are in an asylum. She is divorced from their father,"

she went on coolly, "and he is married to the leading lady. Candidly," she added, looking at him with a courageous smile, "prejudice apart, is it not magnificent material?"

A storm of words trembled upon the verge of his lips, but his diplomacy instinctively sealed them up. "You can never use it," he said instead.

"Perfectly! I am not quite sure about the form--whether I shall write as one of them, or as myself, telling the story of my experience. But I never dreamed of having such an opportunity. If I didn't mean to write a word I should be glad of it--a look into another world, with its own customs and language and ethics and pleasures and pains. _Quelle chance!_

"And then," she went on, as if to herself, "to be of the life, the strange, unreal, painted, lime-lighted life that goes on behind the curtain! That is something--to act one's part in it, to know that one's own secret role is a thousand times more difficult than any in the _repertoire_. Can't you understand?" she appealed. "You are horribly unresponsive. We won't talk of it any longer."

she added, with a little offended air. "How is Janet?"

"We must talk of it, Elfrida," Cardiff answered. "Let me tell you one thing," he added steadily. "Such a book as you propose writing would be cla.s.sed as the lowest sensationalism. People would compare it with the literature of the police court."

Elfrida sprang to her feet, with her head thrown back and-her beautiful eyes alight. "_Touche!_" Cardiff thought exultingly.

"You may go too far!" she exclaimed pa.s.sionately. "There are some things that may not be said!"

Cardiff went over to her quickly and took her hand.

"Forgive me," he said. "Forgive me--I am very much in earnest."

She turned away from him. "You had no right to say it.

You know my work, and you know that the ideal of it is everything in the world to me--my religion. How dared you suggest a comparison between, it and--_cette ordure la!_"

Her voice broke, and Cardiff fancied she was on the brink of tears. "Elfrida," he cried miserably, "let us have an end of this! I have no right to intrude my opinions--if you like, my prejudices--between you and what you are doing. But I have come to beg you to give me the right."

He came a step closer and laid his free hand lightly on her shoulder. "Elfrida," he said unhesitatingly, "I want you to be my wife."

"And Janet's stepmother!" thought the girl swiftly. But she hoped he would not mention Janet; it would burlesque the situation.

"Your going away made me quite sure," he added simply.

"I can never do without you altogether again. Instead I want to possess you altogether." He bent his fine face to the level of hers, and took both her hands in his.

Elfrida thought that by that light he looked strangely young.

She slipped her hands away, but did not move, He was still very close to her--she could feel his breath upon her hair.

"Oh no!" she said. "Marriage is so absurd!" and immediately it occurred to her that she might have put this more effectively. "Cela n'est pas bien dit!" she thought.

"Let us sit down together and talk about it," he answered gently, and drew her toward the little sofa in the corner.

"But--I am afraid--there is nothing more to say. And in a quarter of an hour I must go."

Cardiff smiled masterfully. "I could marry you, little one, in a quarter of an hour," he said.

But at the end of that time Lawrence Cardiff found himself very far indeed from the altar, and more enlightened perhaps than he had ever been before about the radicalism of certain modern sentiments concerning it. She would change, he averred; might he be allowed to hope that she would change, and to wait--months, years? She would never change, Elfrida avowed, it was useless--quite useless--to think of that. The principle had too deep a root in her being--to tear it up would be to destroy her whole joy in life, she said, leaving Cardiff to wonder vaguely what she meant.

"I will wait," he said, as she rose to go; "but you will come back with me now, and we will write a book--some other book--together."

The girl laughed gaily. "All alone by myself I must do it," she answered. "And I must do _this_ book. You will approve it when it is done. I am not afraid."

He had her hands again. "Elfrida," he threatened, "if you go on the stage to-night in the costume I see so graphically advertised--an Austrian hussar, isn't it?--I will attend. I will take a box," he added, wondering at his own brutality. But by any means he must prevail.

Elfrida turned a shade paler. "You will not do that,"

she said gravely. "Good-by. Thank you for having come to persuade me to give this up. And I wish I could do what you would like. But it is quite, quite impossible." She bent over him and touched his forehead lightly with her lips. "Good-by," she said again, and was gone.

An hour later he was on his way back to town. As the mail train whizzed by another, side-tracked to await its pa.s.sing, Mr. Cardiff might have seen Kendal, if there had been time to look, puffing luxuriously in a smoking compartment, and unfolding a copy of the _Ill.u.s.trated Age_.

CHAPTER XXV.