"Of course, without considering you. You did not occur to me, and even if you had I should not have considered you, for we settled just now that your att.i.tude on that point was not--well, considerable. But I am glad now--I speak quite calmly--that I have done it. I do not like humbug; we have had a good deal of it. I shall before very long let Marie know what I have heard."

"Said," interrupted Jack.

"Heard. That will make a coolness between us, for she will be silently scornful of me. Oh, the truth is this, Jack--I am glad, yes, glad, that I am not going to pretend to be friends with Marie much longer. There are many good women who apparently do not mind hypocrisy, but there are many women who have no pretension whatever to be good who do not like being hypocrites. I am one. I shall not go to heaven when I die in any case, but I a.s.sure you that if I could by promising to talk about Sunday-schools to the saints I would refuse it. Now go away and have your row with Marie."

"You advise that?"

"I insist on it, else I should have wasted all my anger. Dear me, we are a sweet couple, you and I!"

There was a ring of sudden bitter sincerity in her tone, and he looked up surprised.

"What is the matter, Mildred?" he asked.

"Anything, everything, nothing. Perhaps your absurd conduct, Jack; perhaps the thunderstorm which is certainly coming; perhaps reaction from my anger. Perhaps that I have got my way: I have started a scandal about Marie--got it successfully launched. I have the sickness of success. Oh, decidedly the only way to be happy is to want things, not to get them."

"Want, then; it is easy enough."

"I am beginning to wonder whether it is," said she. "I rather think that the faculty of wanting is a faculty which belongs to youth. Dear me! I am getting philosophical, and I beg your pardon. Tell me the news. When is the dissolution?"

"Who knows? Not even the family, I believe, and I have not the honour of belonging to them. But, I imagine, not later than the end of July."

"Then the election will interfere with the grouse-shooting, will it not?"

Jack laughed.

"Yes, but apparently it is decided that Imperial affairs are to rank above grouse-shooting for once in a way!"

Mildred looked at the clock.

"I must go," she said. "I've got a hair-dresser and a dressmaker and a manicurist all waiting, and, for aught I know, a palmist and a dentist, and I'm dining at the Hungarian Emba.s.sy, an affair which demands, if not prayer, at any rate fasting. I never get used to that sort of _corvee_."

"Why do you do it, then?"

"Because it is only by doing that sort of thing with religious regularity that you get to the stage when you need no longer do it unless you choose. Besides, I purpose to say a word for you in an august ear. He is taking an interest, I am told, in the army. He also takes an interest in me. I amuse him. Come to lunch to-morrow, and tell me what has happened."

The thunderstorm predicted by Lady Brereton was already beginning to grumble in the west as Jack left the house, and before he got to Park Lane a few large, warm drops were splashing on the pavements. He asked the man who opened the door whether his wife was at home, and, learning that she was in, went up to her sitting-room. Marie was there, sitting in the balcony overlooking the park, her back turned to the room, so that she did not see Jack as he entered. By her was sitting another figure, whom he recognised. Jack strolled out to join them, lighting a cigarette.

"Good-evening, Spencer," he said. "Pray don't move. There's a storm coming up."

But Jim Spencer rose.

"I was just going," he said. "I shall just get home before it begins."

He shook hands with them both, and went through the sitting-room and down-stairs. On the sound of the front-door banging behind him Jack spoke.

"Do you remember my warning you that people would talk if you were intimate with that man?" he said.

"Perfectly."

"You have chosen to disregard my warning. The consequence is that people have begun to talk."

Marie got up.

"Who, and where?" she said, facing him.

"It does not matter who. Where? In the clubs. 'So the Snowflake has melted. I saw her driving with the melter.' I heard that said this afternoon."

The rain began to fall heavily, and a blue scribble of light rent the sky. Marie did not reply, but went inside, followed by her husband. The room was very dark, and each could see no more than the form of the other. In the gloom her answer came--very cool and crisp, an extraordinary contrast to the hot, thick darkness.

"And you tell this to me," she asked--"to me?"

"It concerns you, does it not?"

"As much as that which the gutter press says of the King concerns the King. And you knew it, Jack."

Jack sat down in a chair, his back to what light there was. To her he was almost invisible except for the glowing spark of his cigarette, which, as he drew breath, faintly illuminated his mouth.

"For a woman of the world," he said, "you are more ignorant than I should have thought possible. Who are the women who are talked about at the clubs? Half a dozen names occur to you, as they do to me. Do you like being the seventh?"

Again there was silence, broken first by a sullen roar of thunder, then by Marie's voice.

"I want to ask you one question, Jack," she said. "Do you not know--you yourself--that to couple my name with that of any man except you, is to utter a foul and baseless calumny?"

"That is not the point," said he. "The point is that your name has so been coupled."

"Do you not know it?" she repeated.

Again there was silence. The devil, probably, would have betted on Jack's saying "No." If so, he would have lost his money.

"Yes, I know it," he replied; and his tattered flag of honour waved again.

"Then, how dare you repeat such a thing to me?" said Marie, still in the same unnaturally even voice. "For you seem to forget one thing, Jack, and that is that I am your wife!"

"It is exactly that which I remember," he said.

"Then you are beyond me, and I cannot understand you at all. You seem to think--G.o.d knows what you think! Anyhow, the standard of honour which is yours is utterly incomprehensible to me. You approach me with a sort of calm gusto to tell me a canard you have picked out of the clubs or out of the gutter, and you seem to think I shall care! What I care about is something quite different, and that is that you should have told me. I suppose your object was to wound me, to punish me--so you put it to yourself, for my having disregarded your warning. It is true that you have wounded me, but not in the way you think. Not long ago you thought good to cast doubts on the way in which I told you I had spent my evening. This is one step worse. And I warn you that another step may take you too far! That is all I have to say."

She turned round and, with a quick movement of her finger, turned on the electric light and stood in all her splendid beauty before him. Her bosom heaved with her intense suppressed emotion, her eye was kindled, and her mouth, slightly parted with her quickened breath, just showed the white line of her teeth. And sudden amazement at her loveliness seized the man. He looked long, then got up and advanced to her.

"Marie, Marie!" he said with entreaty, and laid his hand on her arm.

"Ah, don't touch me!" she cried.

CHAPTER XI