"What is the particular object of your going on seeing me?" I asked, with a smile.

She turned away and shrugged her shoulders and took up her pensive att.i.tude by the fire.

"I have no other friend," she said.

"There's Dale."

"He's not the same."

"There's Sir Joshua Oldfield."

She shrugged her shoulders.

I lit a cigarette and sat down. There was a long silence. In some unaccountable way she had me under her spell again. I felt a perfectly insane dismay at the prospect of ending this queer intimacy, and I viewed her intrigue with Dale with profound distaste. Lola had become a habit. The chair I was sitting in was _my_ chair. Adolphus was _my_ dog.

I hated the idea of Dale making him stand up and do sentry with the fire shovel, while Lola sprawled gracefully on the hearthrug. On the other hand the thought of remaining in London and sharing with my young friend the privilege of her society was intolerable.

I smoked, and, watching her bosom rise and fall as she leaned forward with one arm on the mantelpiece, argued it out with myself, and came to the paradoxical conclusion that I could pack her off without a pang to Kamtchatka and the embraces of her unknown husband, but could not hand her over to Dale without feelings of the deepest repugnance. A pretty position to find myself in. I threw away my cigarette impatiently.

Presently she said, not stirring from her pose:

"I shall miss you terribly if you go. A man like you doesn't come into the life of a common woman like me without"--she hesitated for a word--"without making some impression. I can't bear to lose you."

"I shall be very sorry to give up our pleasant comradeship," said I, "but even if I stay and send the private inquiry agent instead of going myself, I shan't be able to go on seeing you in this way."

"Why not?"

"It would be scarcely dignified."

"On account of Dale?"

"Precisely."

There was another pause, during which I lit another cigarette. When I looked up I saw great tears rolling down her cheeks. A weeping woman always makes me nervous. You never know what she is going to do next.

Safety lies in checking the tears--in administering a tonic. Still, her wish to retain me was very touching. I rose and stood before her by the mantelpiece.

"You can't have your pudding and eat it too," said I.

"What do you mean?"

"You can't have Captain Vauvenarde for your husband, Dale for your _cavaliere servente_, and myself for your guide, philosopher and friend all at the same time."

"Which would you advise me to give up?"

"That's obvious. Give up Dale."

She uttered a sound midway between a sob and a laugh, and said, as it seemed, ironically:

"Would you take his place?"

Somewhat ironically, too, I replied, "A crock, my dear lady, with one foot in the grave has no business to put the other into the _Pays du Tendre_."

But all the same I had an absurd desire to take her at her word, not for the sake of const.i.tuting myself her _amant en t.i.tre_, but so as to dispossess the poor boy who was clamouring wildly for her among his mother's snuffy colleagues in Berlin.

"That's another reason why I shrink from your going in search of my husband," she said, dabbing her eyes. "Your ill-health."

"I shall have to go abroad out of this dreadful climate in any case.

Doctor's orders. And I might just as well travel about with an object in view as idle in Monte Carlo or Egypt."

"But you might die!" she cried; and her tone touched my heart.

"I've got to," I said, as gently as I could; and the moment the words pa.s.sed my lips I regretted them.

She turned a terrified look on me and seized me by the arms.

"Is it as bad as that? Why haven't you told me?"

I lifted my arms to her shoulders and shook my head and smiled into her eyes. They seemed true, honest eyes, with a world of pain behind them.

If I had not regarded myself as the gentleman in the Greek Tragedy walking straight to my certain doom, and therefore holding myself aloof from such vain things, I should have yielded to the temptation and kissed her there and then. And then goodness knows what would have happened.

As it was it was bad enough. For, as we stood holding on to each other's shoulders in a ridiculous and compromising att.i.tude, the door opened and Dale Kynnersley burst, unannounced, into the room. He paused on the threshold and gaped at us, open-mouthed.

CHAPTER IX

We sprang apart, for all the world like a guilty pair surprised. Luckily the room was in its normal dim state of illumination, so that to one suddenly entering, the expression on our faces was not clearly visible; on the other hand, the subdued light gave a romantic setting to the abominable situation.

Lola saved it, however. She rushed to Dale.

"Do you know what Mr. de Gex was just telling me? His illness--it is worse than any one thought. It's incurable. He can't live long; he must die soon. It's dreadful--dreadful! Did you know it?"

Dale looked from her to me, and after a slight pause, came forward.

"Is this true, Simon?"

A plague on the woman for catching me in the trap! Before Dale came in I was on the point of putting an airy construction on my indiscreet speech. I had no desire to discuss my longevity with any one. I want to keep my miserable secret to myself. It was exasperating to have to entrust it even to Dale. And yet, if I repudiated her implied explanation of our apparent embrace it would have put her hopelessly in the wrong. I had to support her.

"It's what the doctors say," I replied, "but whether it's true or not is another matter."

Again he looked queerly from me to Lola and from Lola back to me. His first impression of our att.i.tude had been a shock from which he found it difficult to recover. I smiled, and, although perfectly innocent, felt a villain.

"Madame Brandt is good enough to be soft-hearted and to take a tragic view of a most commonplace contingency."

"But it isn't commonplace. By G.o.d, it's horrible!" cried the boy, the arrested love for me suddenly gushing into his heart. "I had no idea of it. In Heaven's name, Simon, why didn't you tell me? My dear old Simon."

Tears rushed into his eyes and he gripped my hand until I winced. I put my other hand on his shoulder and laughed with a contorted visage.

"My good Dale, the moribund are fragile."