"Russia is an epileptic, like so many of her people. She has the inspired moment, the convulsion, the apathy. Again inspiration--again convulsions--apathy--_e da capo_--_e da capo_."

As he uttered these words, his eyes were fixed insolently on Prince Suberov.

Sophy saw several heads turn hastily in her husband's direction. The faces of those near him wore a scared expression.

Suberov was a tall, impa.s.sive man of sixty-five, with a singularly gentle face, and small, deep-set, sad grey eyes.

While every one waited, scarcely daring to glance at him, he replied, tranquilly courteous:

"Yes ... my country is called 'Holy Russia' by us who love her. Her sickness to us is certainly 'the sacred sickness.'"

One felt relief stir like a draught around the table. But Chesney would not let it go at that. His eyes gleamed malevolently. He thrust out his jaw in a way that Sophy knew well.

"_Oui_," he said, in French, which his execrable English accent rendered more brutal. "_Oui--'cette sacree maladie'!_" His accent on the word "_sacree_" made it sheer insult.

Suberov looked at him intently.

"I fear _monsieur_ is not feeling well this evening," he said gravely.

"I have heard that _monsieur_ has been ill. Of course an invalid's opinions on sickness are always interesting, though not conclusive."

For a second it was as though every one at the table held his breath. A look of fury crossed Chesney's face; then he thrust out his chin with that self-conscious, slightly embarra.s.sed smile so familiar to his wife, and cried: "_Touche, monsieur, touche!_"

It seemed to Sophy that, at the same moment, a very pandemonium of voices broke out on every side. People seemed saying anything that came uppermost in their minds. Sophy herself found that she was talking feverishly to Amaldi of the little boat that he had just sent Bobby, of how she had wound it up herself and set it going in his bathtub, of how naturally the little men worked their oars. She talked and talked--telling him anecdotes of Bobby's funny ways and speeches. Her deep, sweet laughter rang out clearly. Every one was laughing a little exaggeratedly over just such trivialities.

And Amaldi took the cue from her. He began to talk lightly, in a vein of real humour that she had not divined in him. He told her of the dry drollery of the Milanese. One little story made her laugh out like a child--quite naturally this time. And so grateful was she to Amaldi for helping her to a rational screen for her terrible nervousness, that she began to chatter gaily to him, and kept on and on, not realising that she was giving him an undue amount of her attention, and that, twice at least, Tyne had tried in vain to get her to talk with him.

The bell rang for a division in the House. Several men got up and left the table to vote. Sophy glanced up vaguely a moment as they went out, then returned to her light chatter with Amaldi.

No one seemed to notice this particularly, or, if they did notice it, it was probable that they understood only too well the nervous excitement which led her to keep up this gay rattle as if not daring to pause.

Tyne understood perfectly. If he had twice attempted to break in on her talk with Amaldi it was only because he saw something very dangerous in the glances which her husband was beginning to cast at her.

Suddenly Chesney leaned his arms on the table, pushing the gla.s.ses to one side. He thrust forward his face in his wife's direction. It was livid. Moisture stood on his forehead. His eyes burned black. The people near him gazed appalled. It was not so much like a face as like a mask of hatred.

Several times Amaldi, who also had caught glimpses of this face, had tried to let the conversation drop naturally. Sophy had been talking steadily with him for at least fifteen minutes. But it was as if she were afraid to stop for a moment--like a nervous skater who knows that if she pauses she will fall.

And all at once it happened--the monstrous--the incredible thing.

What he had thought that she was saying, Sophy could never divine. Even long afterwards when she could think of it with comparative calmness, she could not imagine what he could have thought--or could she ever remember what it was that she had really been saying. But whatever it was, as the words came from her smiling lips, suddenly, barking it out at her, before that brilliant company, before some of the most famous men and women of the day--her husband called down the long table to her:

"You lie!"

She was so startled--the thing was so incredible--that, thinking she had not heard aright, she turned towards him and said:

"What, Cecil?"

He called again, distinctly:

"I say you lied. What you said just now was a lie."

Then, his arms still on the table, his shoulders hunched, he began sipping a fresh gla.s.s of wine, staring moodily before him, with a sort of vacant, bovine ferocity in his fixed eyes.

Every one has noticed how some trivial fact always imprints itself indelibly on one's mind in such ghastly moments. Opposite Sophy sat the beautiful d.u.c.h.ess of Maidsdowne. As Chesney shouted his insult at his wife, the blood rushed in a scarlet wave to the roots of the d.u.c.h.ess's chestnut hair, and the lovely, violent crimson glowed, painfully over-brilliant, on her cheeks for the rest of the evening. This agonised blush was the one thing that Sophy could ever clearly recall of the moments that followed. All went black about her the next instant; then her will conquered, and she sat still, and conscious, but all that she was conscious of was that the d.u.c.h.ess of Maidsdowne had blushed crimson, and that this crimson still dyed her lovely face. Sophy had heard that she was consumptive and that she rouged to conceal her illness. Now she kept thinking, "No. She does not rouge. I must remember to tell Olive.

She does not rouge at all. What a wonderful colour. And how it rushed up to the very edge of her hair."

Next there came over her another strange feeling which also every one is familiar with. She felt that she was in one of those dreams, wherein one finds oneself on the street or in a crowded a.s.sembly, insufficiently clad, for every one to stare and wonder at.

Beside her sat Amaldi, no paler than some others at that table, yet realising how much worse than death it is to love a woman whose husband insults her, and yet, for the sake of that very woman, to be unable to avenge the insult.

Before the company could a.s.sume more than a strained semblance of naturalness, those guests who had gone out to vote in the division, returned. One of them, a sporting member, a good-natured but typically John Bullish type of M. P. and a country neighbour of John Arundel's, called out as he took his seat:

"Hullo, John! What's gone wrong with your feast? Somebody's been throwing wet blankets over the tablecloth."

He was quickly suppressed. The other men looked curious, but having more "gumption," began talking commonplaces with a commendable show of having noticed nothing unusual. Later on, Oswald Tyne murmured to the Countess Hohenfels:

"I have often thought that the exquisite virtue of Nero's vice is much underestimated. Suppose him as presiding in the present case, for instance. I presume that the brute over there is regarded by many as 'a Christian gentleman.' Think how many 'Christian gentlemen' Nero disposed of by the simple device of wrapping them in pitch and applying fire. Do you not think that this festival would have been much more festive had it been lighted by the Hon. Cecil, as a living torch?"

But the Countess Hohenfels, although she was not noted for sensibility, could not rally, even to the persiflage of Oswald Tyne.

When Arundel was apologising to Prince Suberov after dinner, the impa.s.sive Russian said quietly:

"I beg you not to give the matter another thought. The young man is evidently demented. Our sympathy should all be for his wife. What a beautiful, distinguished creature! When all is said, living is a sad _metier_!"

As soon as the guests rose from table, Chesney left. Sophy's pride would not allow her to go before the usual hour for such things. Every one was charming to her--almost too charming. At moments she felt that she could not bear it--that she must scream frantically, childishly, like Bobby when he had had a bad dream--or throw herself over the parapet into the Thames. But her face, though it had a pinched look, was very quiet.

Olive managed to whisper to her, once as they stood close together:

"He's a cwuel _bwute_ ... we must get you out of his power somehow."

"Don't, Olive ... don't speak of it," Sophy had gasped out.

"Very well. But I'll be with you first thing to-morrow."

"No ... please. I must be alone. I must think."

Olive, whose heart was sound though so elastic, understood perfectly.

"Very well," she said again. "But mind you send for me the first moment you feel you need me."

"Thanks," murmured Sophy. "Thanks--dear Olive."

Amaldi did not try to talk to her. She was very grateful to him for this. He understood too well. These others pitied but did not understand. To have felt the close contact of a compa.s.sion that comprehended was more than she could have endured. It would have broken her down utterly. But he watched her from afar with a quiet yet absorbed look, that was not without meaning to Suberov, on whom, also, Sophy had made a deep and poignant impression.

He came near the young man, and said in Italian in his sweet, melancholy voice, after himself regarding Sophy in silence for a moment:

"A strong soul--heroic!"

Amaldi answered dreamily, as though it were quite natural for the old statesman to address him in his native tongue.