"The spring flew; yes, but not as you suppose. I pretended that a sight of even a few of her past dresses might suggest a fragmentary romance, though of course she was too young for histories such as were meant by the originator of the idea. She is only twenty-four," he parenthesised, "was married at nineteen; I learnt that."

"Well?"

"She snapped at my offer--was almost ardent in her wish to test me.

"'I could show you the most important dresses I have worn in the last seven years,' she said. 'I used to clothe myself in gowns to match my moods at one time,' she added.

"I saw myself face to face with the last fence, and baulked. I began backing out. There were soft places, I could not tell how deep or how soft, beyond, and I was nervous.

"'Come,' she urged, spurring with almost excited insistence, 'if you outline with the smallest correctness I will supply the lights and shades truthfully.'

"She said the last words with pathetic emphasis that frightened me.

"I determined to change the subject. Caught the little finger of her left hand and kissed it. Did I tell you she had never shaken hands with me with her right--that she had explained she kept it for secular and the other for sacred use? I kissed it, in the centre of her palm, and her body curled like a sensitive plant with the warmth of my lips. I blushed for having doubted her purity or her love."

He buried his head in his hands and seemed disinclined to reveal more.

But after a long pause he began afresh.

"I'm telling you everything--exactly as it happened--that you may reverence her. She's too clean and transparent to be clouded by vulgar doubt," he said, rather to himself than to me.

"She insisted on my accompanying her to a spa.r.s.ely-furnished room," he went on. "The walls were fitted with hooks and slides to improvise a wardrobe.

"'I have kept some of my gowns since I was a girl,' she sighed.

"'Those, I suppose, that were episodic?' I affected to laugh to waive her seriousness.

"'Oh, the everyday ones were thrown away--worn out: these were most of them connected with'--she hesitated--'eventful occasions.'

"I again wavered--allusions to these eventful occasions seemed to portend grief to her and pain incidentally to me.

"I caught her wrist as it turned the handle of the wardrobe door, and remonstrated. 'I refuse to see them; I know nothing of clothes and I'm not a detective, I won't pry into your past secrets, either of sorrow or of joy.'

"Her hand shook in my clasp.

"'Don't stop me,' she cried, imperatively. 'Help me--I want you to know them.'

"'So be it,' I said, and pushed back the door. Then she suddenly flung herself in front of it, between me and the row of dainty frocks and shimmering laces. She looked like Ca.s.sandra--in a soft, yellowy flannel gown with loose sleeves falling away from her pink arms that blushed with the heaving blood in her warm b.r.e.a.s.t.s--like Ca.s.sandra guarding the gate of a citadel, though her lips said in a tone richer than wine, sweeter than music, 'Kiss me first.'"

There was a long pause--Yeldham sat blankly staring at the coals, and I gazed intently into the mists of nicotine that curled upwards to the ceiling. Through them I could conjure a vision of her bronzed coronal and Aubrey's ma.s.sive muscularity, and could picture her glowing arms around his neck--a convolvulus entwining a Gothic column.

"There are some kisses," he said presently, "that are worth the whole sum of human pleasure. Pleasure! Faugh!--a rotten word--belonging to those who only half live!"

He handled a cigarette mechanically and lit it.

"Well," he continued, "the first dress was white. A virginal thing of simple gauze and flummery, with a frontage of puffings to make up for bust development. Quite a girl's dress. Women, you know, are less generous in the matter of--chiffon, don't they call it?--and more so in the matter of flesh. It was her debut dress--I supposed--but she contradicted.

"'No,' she explained, 'not quite that. One's debut is a hazy affair: all excitement, wonder, blush, and clumsiness, with little or no enjoyment.

Yet how many of us would give the long, grey end of life for that first night's dappling of peach bloom? It was the frock I wore on the evening I first met my husband.'

"She spoke his name with a dull accent of grief, and I buried myself amongst the flippery. Her kiss was moist on my lips, and I had no taste for allusions to the dead man.

"The next thing was a riding habit--torn across the skirt.

"'A cropper,' I remarked; 'and enjoyed, or this memento would scarcely be here?'

"'That,' she allowed, sadly, 'is a natural inference--correct in this case, but not in all.' I glanced hurriedly along the line for relics of c.r.a.pe--but she resumed my enlightenment. 'This was a souvenir of a grand day's hunting and a broken ankle.'

"'And someone?' I hinted.

"'Yes; George--my husband--carried me home.'

"I turned abruptly to a party frock--the colour of a rose. There was a green patch on the right breast--the blurr of crushed flowers.

"'No occasion to state what this means,' I snapped irritably. I was seized with a desire to close the wardrobe on these trophies of conquest.

"'No,' she said, with a quiver of the lips, 'we were married soon after.'

"I threw myself into an arm-chair in the sulks, but she moved on to show another gown--a bed or invalid gown--worn and faded.

"'An illness,' I said; 'you had no strength left for coquetry?'

"'Puerperal fever,' she explained. 'My baby died, and my brain--it seemed to get paroxysms of depression and exaltation. Don't you think that a supernatural power ordains our moods, shifts the evenness of balance, makes us sometimes irresponsible?'

"There was a lambent excitement in her manner, which was usually gentle, almost lethargic.

"'We can't be responsible for our brains in illness, particularly fever.

But you recovered?' I said, pointing to some fine azure drapery encrusted with j.a.panese gold.

"'I recovered; yes, but I never wore that.'

"'It belonged to someone you loved?'

"'It was mine,' she said, 'and was worn by a woman I hated. She borrowed it one night after coming over in the rain; she used to attend me devotedly during my illness.'

"'Yet you hated her?' I asked, taking my cue from the curl of her lip.

"'Not then. In those days I thought men were true--George truest of all--and women good.'

"I smiled, but she was quite serious.

"'In this way;' she explained, 'I imagined that if they sinned, it was either for sheer love or for bare life.'

"I looked down at the gold storks on the heavy eastern silk, and said, 'And when did you change your opinion?'

"'When I hung away this gown, and determined it should never touch me.'

"'This woman showed you a new type?'