But now everything was changed. Jane had denied him, and he felt an imperative need of the kind, comfortable words Athena would lavish on him. He was sick of lies--of the lies he had told himself. He hungered for Athena's presence. What an unmannerly brute she must have thought him, to have avoided her as he had done, all that day and all the day before!

Very gently she bade him sit down, and in some subtle fashion she ministered to Lingard in a way that restored to a certain extent his feeling of self-respect. And then at last, when secure that there would be no interruptions, for the dinner bell had rung some moments before, she leant forward and said slowly, "Is something the matter? Is anything troubling you, Hew? Is it a matter in which I can help?"

She desired above all things that he should speak to her of Jane Oglander. But her wish was not to be gratified.

"Everything is troubling me," he said sombrely. "Everything!"

She moved a little nearer to him. Her hand lay close to his. Suddenly he took her hand and held it. "I loathe myself," he said in a low voice. "I needn't tell you the reason why, Athena,--you know, you understand----"

"Ah! Yes--I understand," there was a thrill in her voice. "How often I have felt ashamed of my own longing--of my longing to be free!"

It was a bow at a venture. He looked at her with dazed eyes. That was not what he had meant. Then suddenly he caught fire from her thin flame.

"If you were free?" he repeated thickly. "I wish to G.o.d, Athena, that you were free----"

She withdrew her hand from his, and got up. "It's nearly eight o'clock,"

she said quietly. "We must go up and dress now."

CHAPTER XII

"There's not a crime But takes its proper change still out in crime If once rung on the counter of this world."

All that night Athena lay awake. Her brain was extraordinarily alive.

She had not had so bad a bout of wakefulness for years.

If only she were free!

She lay wondering what Lingard had meant by those words--words which she had put into his mouth, and which he had uttered in the thick tones of a man who has lost control of himself, and who speaks scarce knowing what he says.

In the world in which Mrs. Maule lived when she was not at Rede Place, it was a firmly-established belief that those unhappily or unsuitably married could, by making a determined effort, strike off their fetters.

And in this connection it had been gradually borne in upon her that the good old proverb which declares that where there's a will there's a way is, in the England of to-day, peculiarly true of everything that pertains to the marital relations of men and women.

The question had never before touched her nearly, and Athena as a rule only concerned herself with what did touch her nearly.

However much she chafed against the bonds which bound her to Richard Maule, the thought that she, Mrs. Maule of Rede Place, should join the crowd of ambiguous women who are neither maids, nor wives, nor widows, was unthinkable. Her day, so she often secretly reasoned with herself, would come later--after Richard's death. At the time of their marriage he had made magnificent, absurdly magnificent settlements. He could do nothing to alter that fact; so much she had been at some pains to ascertain. Meanwhile, she made the best she could of life.

But now, with a dramatic suddenness which strongly appealed to her calculating and yet undisciplined nature--an unlooked for piece of good fortune had come her way. Were she free, or within reasonable sight of freedom, the kind of life for which she now longed pa.s.sionately was almost certainly within her grasp.

Lingard the man roused in Athena Maule none of that indescribable sensation, part physical, part mental, which she had at first thought, nay hoped, he would do. But that, so she told herself with unconscious cynicism, was a fortunate thing. She had now set her whole heart on being Lingard's wife,--only to secure that end would she be Lingard's lover. Her wild oats were sown. Never more would she allow herself to become the prey of pa.s.sion,--that "creature of poignant thirst and exquisite hunger...."

She gave but a very fleeting thought to Lingard's engagement to Jane Oglander. Engagements are perpetually made and broken, and fortunately this particular engagement had not even been publicly announced.

No; what deeply troubled her, what stood in the way of the fruition of her desire was--Richard, the man who had so slight a hold on life, and yet who seemed so tenacious of that which had surely lost all savour.

In the darkness of the night, the pallid face of Athena's husband rose before her,--cruel, watchful, streaked, as it so often was when Richard looked her way, with contempt as well as hatred.

How amazingly Richard had altered in the ten years she had known him, and in nothing more than in the expression of his face, which she now visioned with such horrible vividness!

In old days Richard Maule had had a handsome, dreamy, placid face,--the kind of profile which looks to great advantage on a cameo or medal. Now, as Athena often told herself, it was the face of a suffering devil, and of a devil, alas! who looked as if he would never die.

But the days when she had measured anxiously the span of Richard's life were past. Athena, now, could not afford to wait for her husband's death; she must find some other way to freedom.

There was a story which had remained imprinted for two years--or was it three?--on the tablets of Mrs. Maule's memory, and this was the more strange, the more significant, because she had not come across the case in any direct way.

All she could remember of the affair--luckily she had a very good memory for such things--had been told her by a certain Mrs. Stanwood, who was noted for her extraordinary knowledge of other people's business, and for whom Athena had never had any particular liking.

But now the idle words of this casual acquaintance became tremendously significant, pregnant with vital issues.

She sat up in the darkness and pressed her hands against her face in her effort to recapture every word of what had been at the time so unimportant a piece of gossip.

The story had been told her at Ranelagh. She could still see the low-ceilinged entrance hall where the eagerly whispered words had been uttered.

They were standing together, Athena and Maud Stanwood, waiting for the rest of their party, when there had swept by them a pretty, well-dressed, tired-looking woman. Suddenly, a man had come forward and the two for a moment met face to face. Then, with a muttered word of apology, the man pa.s.sed on.

Mrs. Stanwood clutched Athena's arm. "Do look at them!" she whispered.

"How very dramatic! I wonder if this is the first time they have met since the case!" And Athena obediently stared at the pretty, tired-looking woman; the man had disappeared.

"Who is she? Who are they? What case do you mean?" she asked.

And the other answered provokingly, "Surely you remember all about it?"

"But I don't remember. Please tell me? Was it a divorce case?" Athena spoke a little pettishly.

"Divorce? Oh, _no_! Something quite different. Why, if she had been divorced she would not be here. No, no; their marriage was annulled. The case made quite a talk because they had been married so long--I believe fourteen years. I was at the wedding. She was such a pretty bride. Of course she married again--the other man. But it's rather bad taste of her to come here now, for she used to be here a good deal with him--I mean with her first husband."

Athena, amused with the tale, had pressed the other to tell her all about it, and Mrs. Stanwood, nothing loth, had proceeded to do so, quoting similar cases, and intimating, with the shrewdness which always distinguished her, how odd it was that more childless women didn't have recourse to so easy, so reputable a way of ridding themselves of dull and undesirable husbands!

A sensation of intense relief, nay more, of triumphant satisfaction, stole into Athena's heart. What that woman, that nervous, pretty, faded-looking woman, had done after fourteen years of marriage, Athena could certainly do now. No one looking at Richard--at that poor, miserable wreck of a man--could doubt that Mrs. Maule had a right to her freedom.

"If only you were free!" She was not quite sure in what sense Lingard had uttered those memorable words, but it was enough for her that he could, if necessary, be reminded of having said them. Once she were indeed free, Lingard, so Athena felt comfortably sure, would not need to be so reminded.

Nature, so unkind to woman, has given her one great advantage over man.

She can, while herself remaining calm, rouse in him a whirlwind of tempestuous emotion.

Many a time in the last few years Mrs. Maule had heard the cry, "If only you were free!" but, while listening with downcast eyes to the hopeless wish, she had known well that the speaker did not really mean what he said, or if he meant it--poor Bayworth Kaye had meant it--then he was, like Bayworth, ineligible, or if eligible as a lover, absurdly ineligible as a husband.

Her acute, subtle mind, trained from childhood only to concentrate itself on those problems which affected, or might affect, herself, turned to the lesser problem of Jane Oglander.

Jane Oglander was an obstacle. Far less an one than Richard, but still likely to be a formidable obstacle owing to Lingard's strained sense of honour.

So much must be frankly admitted. But it would be a mistake to make too much of Jane. Once Jane realised how unsuited she was to become Hew Lingard's wife, she would draw back--of that Athena felt a.s.sured.

But how could Jane be brought to understand? Would Lingard himself ever allow her to see the truth, or would the task fall to her--to Athena?

If what the world now thought were true, Hew Lingard might hope to rise to almost any eminence in the delightful, the glorious career of arms.