x.x.xI

It was about this time that Belinda came to a momentous resolution. She said to herself: "I've made Morry feel that he wants me. Now I've got to show him _how much_ he wants me. I'll just clear out and let him see what it feels like to miss me."

The process of "clearing out" was accomplished by the acceptance of an invitation to cruise for a week with an aunt of May Van Raalt. There was to be a gay party of young people aboard. It was the most natural thing in the world for Belinda to wish to go.

When, however, she told Morris, during their afternoon ride, that Sophy had consented to this outing, he seemed to regard it as not only a highly absurd idea but as a personal affront. In fact he was so outrageously ill-tempered about it that Belinda was in inner ecstasies at the sureness of her "inspiration." "If he's like this before I even start, what _will_ he be like by the time I come back?" she thought gleefully.

She set off on the day appointed, in high spirits, all the higher because Morris had refused to shake hands at parting and called her a "shallow gad-about."

But he was shortly to rest in amazement before the fact of how excessively he cared. Everything seemed strangely flat without her. He missed her provocative teasing ... the singing of his blood at her look and touch. The constant, thrilling struggle with temptation. One certainly "lived" every atom of the time that one spent near Linda. She kept existence at high-pressure. One could almost _see_ the little "n.i.g.g.e.r squat on the safety-valve" of her pleasure-craft, by George! But then, too, she was such bully fun to ride with and romp with. Nothing highbrow about Linda. All the same he wasn't going to let her make a fool of him. But, by George! she was the sort one missed--confound her!----

The day after Belinda's departure he was again in the full swing of his old tippling habit. To do without the stimulants both of drink and Belinda he found beyond him. But even this remedy proved vain. The flatness left by her absence was not to be dispelled so easily. The thought of her dogged him night and day.

With Sophy his intercourse was very restricted. On the occasions that the conventional exigencies of their life brought them together he treated her with an aloof and ceremonious politeness. But this manner was not now so much the result of displeasure as of a growing indifference.

The thought of Belinda was such an obsessing flame that all other facts of his existence had become like shadows, Sophy among them. He craved the girl's return so fiercely that he had no coolness of imagination left with which to regard anything but that desired and immediate future. What was to be the result of their reckless, hot-blooded drawing each to each did not seem to him to matter much just then. All that mattered was that this hateful, gnawing emptiness should be filled. He was not used to that hungry cramp of "wanting." Even his want for Sophy--which had for a time given him the wholesome discipline of the seemingly unattainable--had been only too soon a.s.suaged. In some way, somehow ... he was lordly in his vagueness ... this horrid vacuum created by Belinda must be filled by her.

He rushed into the day's pleasures like one hag-ridden. His play at polo was maniacal rather than brilliant.

Belinda came back one afternoon towards twilight. She was on tiptoe with delicious antic.i.p.ation and curiosity. There was in her mood, also, an exasperated craving, for in disciplining Morris she had subjected her own heart to the rod.

The butler said that "Mrs. Loring was out, but Mr. Loring had just come in." Where was Mr. Grey? Mr. Grey was having tea in his private study with Master Bobby. Belinda's heart sent up a glad little tongue of flame. The coast was clear, then. She pulled off her gloves carelessly.

No. She wouldn't have any tea. Did Simms know where Mr. Loring was?

Simms thought that Mr. Loring was in the library. He would go and see.

"Never mind," Belinda said indifferently. "I want a book to take upstairs anyway. Just see after my trunks, Simms. They'll be here in a few minutes...."

She went lightly towards the library, through the long drawing-room that opened into it. Her soft, quick steps in her yachting shoes made no sound. She stopped mid-way the long room and leaned forward from her supple waist, peering between the folds of tapestry that veiled the communicating doorway. Yes. He was there. The lights had not yet been turned on. He was slouched in an armchair smoking moodily. Whiskey and soda stood on a tray beside him.

Belinda thought she knew well what he was brooding on as he lounged there in the deep chair, with the cigarette burning out in his dropped hand. If she had really known all that he was thinking, her triumph would have been complete.

She stole up behind him--leaned over. Close to his ear, so that her warm, musky breath flowed with the words, she murmured: "Have you missed me?"

Ah ... it was worth that week and many more away from him--this crushing clasp of all herself against him. She had not known he was so beautifully strong. It a.s.suaged the fever of her breast to be so bruised. And that kiss--that endless kiss--she had dreamed of kisses such as this through a hundred wakeful nights....

Sophy had returned within ten minutes of Belinda's coming. She, too, had asked Simms where Mr. Loring was, and to her also Simms had replied that Mr. Loring was in the library, he believed--that Miss Horton had just arrived and joined him there.

Sophy, too, had gone down the long room towards the library. It was barely dusk. She could see into the further apartment as plainly as Belinda had done. What she saw was the girl in Loring's arms, and his head just lifting from that prolonged kiss. She stopped, transfixed, her breath inheld.

"You imp ... you witch...." Loring was muttering unsteadily.

"But a '_white_ witch'?" cooed the girl.

Sophy heard him laugh low--that exultant, soft laugh which had once so charmed and disturbed her in the days of their love. "No, by G.o.d! ... a red witch ... colour of blood ... colour of my heart ... flame-colour ... little devil's colour...."

The pa.s.sion-broken words fell about Sophy like drifting sparks, as she hurried away from them in an anguish of panic lest she should be glimpsed by one or the other of those oblivious, hot lovers.

When she reached her bedroom she was breathless mentally and physically.

Reality had fallen upon her like some clumsy, overtaking t.i.taness. Its great bulk, heavy and hot and panting, weighed her down. She felt that she must drag herself from under that dense weight, or suffocate. She turned the key in the lock--went and stood by the open window--took off her hat, her cloak, her gloves, mechanically, with quiet deliberation.

Her movements were all quiet and deliberate. She was saying to herself, "Let me think.... Let me think ..." as though some one were keeping back thought from her.

It is one thing to suspect--to surmise. It is quite another to see with bodily vision. Seeing is believing, they say, yet Sophy felt herself, her inmost self, refusing to believe what she had seen--and heard. This was just at first, before she succeeded in freeing herself from that leaden smothering sense of stupefaction.

Within ten minutes her mind was working with lightning speed and clarity. Now in contrast to her former state, she had a sense of being giddily light and uplifted above the situation. It was as if her part in it did not count at all, as if she were nowhere. Or as if being somewhere, she was conscious on another plane. She had the mental poise of a Sylphide, surveying from the cool balcony of a cloud the doings of two Salamanders in their grotto of flames. This feeling also pa.s.sed quickly. She found herself realising that she was Sophy Loring--just simply and painfully a woman who had seen her husband holding another woman in his arms.

As she faced this realisation, all of pride in her rose to announce, "I do not care." But no sooner had one part of her said this, than another part cried out that she did care--intensely, vehemently. She struggled to clear her mood. She asked herself harshly whether she had any love left for Morris. The reply came with mortifying promptness. Whether she loved him or not, she pa.s.sionately resented another woman's loving him and being loved by him. She felt humiliated by the cra.s.s, primitive fibres that this wound had exposed in the substance of her nature. Was she then capable of a blind, instinctive, mean jealousy, when there was no real love left to excuse it? She did not know that the jealousy for what has been is sometimes even more bitter if less keen than that for what actually exists. She was jealous for all the beautiful, unsullied past that this present act of his defaced beyond retrieval. But then there was also the angry fire of wounded pride--of hurt womanly vanity in her flame of resentment against Belinda. She knew this. It humiliated her to the core. Then her feeling veered again. She experienced a throe of such scorn for Loring as sickened her. This in turn reacted into a sort of wild, impersonal regret for the whole thing--for all concerned in it--Morris, the girl, herself. It was Oth.e.l.lo's cry of unspeakable, confused anguish that echoed in her heart: "But yet the pity of it, Iago! O Iago--the pity of it, Iago!"...

She rose suddenly with a quick, determined movement and looked at her watch. Seven o'clock. She and Loring were dining out at half-past eight.

She must have time to think, to reflect. There must not be a sign of what she knew in face or voice or manner, until she had thoroughly determined how to act. She must go to this dinner as if nothing had happened. She must meet Belinda as she had parted from her. She was deeply thankful that she and the girl were not in the habit of exchanging kisses. Sophy had strength of will, but not enough to have allowed her to kiss Belinda or receive her kiss that evening. And as she thought of the girl's brilliant, sensual mouth, and of that other mouth to which it had lately clung--she blushed hot, then cold--for that icy tingle through all her blood was like a cold and bitter blush.

She spent unusual thought in selecting her toilette for that evening.

She desired to look the ant.i.thesis of Belinda, so she chose a gown of dead white embroidered in crystal. She wished to sign herself to herself, as no longer belonging to Morris--so she wore with it a circlet of little diamond flames, one of Gerald's gifts to her.

But little by little her mood of lofty disdain pa.s.sed finally into still, hot anger. This flashed its fire into her eyes and cheeks. As Louise set the diadem of frosty-flames in place, she remarked with conviction:

"_Madame n'a pas ete aussi en beaute depuis longtemps_...."

Sophy had the strangest sense of triumph in defeat, of dark exultation as she went slowly downstairs towards the drawing-room--the age-old exultation of the deposed queen who feels that her beauty is greater than that of her supplanter.

x.x.xII

Belinda and Loring were already in the drawing-room when she entered.

Belinda stood by a table fingering a vase of Hortensias. She broke one off just then and twirled it nervously. Loring was lighting a cigarette.

It seemed troublesome to light. His hand shook a little.

Sophy paused just within the door, drawing on her gloves, her eyes on Belinda. The pale, mauve-blue flower against the girl's flame-coloured gown made an odd, decadent note. She was all in red chiffon--a silver girdle about her waist--poppies with silver hearts over one ear.

"'Colour of blood ... colour of my heart...." Sophy thought, and it was hard to keep her lip from curling to the sneer in her thought.

She spoke while still busied with her gloves. She said that she hoped Belinda's trip had been pleasant. Belinda said, Thanks, that it had been "bully." Sophy then glanced at the clock. It was only a quarter to eight.

"How very punctual we all are to-night...." she said.

Loring said, as if surprised: "By Jove! Yes ... so we are."

He, too, looked earnestly at the clock. A self-conscious laugh followed his words.

Belinda remarked that as her dinner was at eight _she_ wasn't so very early. "I ought to be going now...." she concluded.

Sophy finished fastening her gloves and came forward. One of the side lights caught her full as she did so, and her white figure sprang out against the shadows of the room beyond with the glitter of snow-spray in sunlight.

She saw Loring glance at her, then look away. Belinda, her chin a little down, gazed steadily. Sophy came still nearer. She had been so pale and listless of late that the delicate, soft fire of her cheeks, and the dark, bright fire of her eyes was doubly striking. The little tongues of flame that lit her hair dazzled with iridescence. Her gown, the jewels in her hair, the light in her dark eyes--all were quivering, glinting.

But she herself was very still. This intense, composed stillness of hers seemed to make the others restless. They fidgeted--Belinda with the blue flowers, Loring with another cigarette.

Suddenly Belinda said spasmodically: