"What people?" asked Riviere uneasily.

"At the nursing home I can see that they regard you as lovers. A woman realises a point like that instinctively. No word was said, but I _know_.... Things can't remain stationary in a situation of that kind.

You know it as well as I do. You are a man of strong pa.s.sions.... Miss Verney is highly-strung, very impressionable."

And then Olive made her one big mistake. She added: "She confessed to me that--how shall I put it?--that it would be dangerous for her to see more of you."

"Miss Verney told you that?"

"In effect."

"I don't believe it!"

"It's as true as I sit here!"

"I don't believe it for a moment!"

"She said even more than that."

"What?"

"That she would be ready to live with you, divorce or no divorce. Don't you see the danger now? Clifford, I appeal to your chivalry! For her sake cut loose now, at once, before it's too late! Say good-bye to her by letter; leave me to arrange the allowance----"

"I tell you I must see her!"

"No!"

"I _must_!"

Olive lost control of herself. "I'm your wife! I forbid you to!" she ordered sharply.

Riviere stiffened. "You told me a fortnight ago you never wanted to see me again."

"I've changed my mind!"

"There's a reason for the change."

"I've told you the reasons!"

"Not all the reasons."

"D'you doubt my word?"

Riviere's business training made him recognize the true meaning of that phrase. He had heard it so many times before from men who were planning some shady trick. He answered decisively: "I've the right to hear from Miss Verney herself what she said to you this afternoon, and I'm going to hear it. That's final!"

Olive was now chalk-white with rage. Every nerve of her body was quivering, but by a supreme effort she regained control over her words.

"You're insulting me!" she returned. "You doubt my word when I tell you that Miss Verney is ready to become your mistress. Very well, come with me and I'll repeat it in front of her."

"No."

"You're afraid of the test!"

"I'll not discuss such a matter."

"You're afraid of the test!"

"I'll not have that insult put upon her."

"It's true! I'll swear to it on the Bible! If it's not true, let her deny it before me. There's the challenge. You owe it to her as well as to me to accept. At least give her the opportunity of denying it, if you think you know her. But you don't know women--you never have, and you never will. I tell you you're living on a volcano. You've no right to compromise her as you're doing now. It's currish! At least I thought you had some spark of chivalry in you! But you won't make the test because you know I've spoken truth. You're afraid. If you want to prove to yourself she's the angel you think her, then make the test. Ask her before me in any form of words you like. Either that or take my word!"

"I'll not ask her that."

"Then at least come with me to see her, and satisfy yourself indirectly that I've spoken the truth when I tell you you're living on a volcano.

Play the game, Clifford, play the game!"

Riviere took up his hat and stick.

"We'll go to see Miss Verney now," he answered.

Husband and wife drove together to the nursing home to see Elaine. But a nurse informed them decisively that Fraulein Verney could receive no visitors; the excitement of the afternoon had been too much for her slowly returning strength, and Dr Hegelmann had ordered her absolute quietude. To-morrow, perhaps, she might be allowed to receive her friends--or perhaps the day after to-morrow.

"I intend to call to-morrow morning," said Olive to her husband.

"I too."

"Shall we say 10.30?"

"If you wish."

"Then call for me at the Quisisana at ten o'clock.... In the meantime, I leave it to your sense of honour not to communicate with Miss Verney."

"Agreed."

"You needn't trouble to see me to my hotel. I'll go back in the taxi."

It was a night of very troubled thought for all three. To Riviere, with his complex, many-layered nature, especially so. The one inevitable, clean-cut solution to all this tangle of circ.u.mstance seemed farther off than ever.

If Riviere had been a man of Larssen's temperament, difficulties would have been smoothed away like hills under the drive of a high-powered car. Lars Larssen would have said to himself: "Which woman do I want?"

and having settled that point, would have jammed on the levers and shot his car straight forward without the slightest regard for any other vehicle or pedestrian on his road. Were any obstacle in his path, so much the worse for the obstacle.

If Larssen under similar circ.u.mstances had wanted Elaine he would have taken her then and there and left Olive to do whatever she pleased. If he had wanted Olive, he would have thrown Elaine in the discard without a moment's remorse. Decisions are easy for such a man as Larssen, because the burden of scruples has been pitched aside.

Riviere, on the other hand, was cursed with scruples--as Olive had phrased it, "a pretty mixed set of scruples." He felt he had to do the square thing by his wife, by Elaine, and by the public who were being called upon to invest their savings under the guarantee of his name. He had to smash the shipowner's scheme, and he had to get back to his own scientific work in peace and quietude.

For Olive, as for Larssen, decisions were far simpler. Her objective was her own gratification; the only point in doubt was the most prudent way to attain it. Her present dominant wish was to revenge herself on Elaine, and to do that she was ready to make any sacrifice of other desires. Even her infatuation for Larssen paled against the white-hot light of this new pa.s.sion.

Elaine, exhausted by the tension of her interview with Olive, slept that night in a succession of heavy-dreamed dozes punctuated by violent starts of waking, like a train creeping into a London terminus through an irregular detonation of fog-signals. Why had Riviere sent no answer to her message? What had Olive said to him? Had she done the best possible thing to free Riviere? That was the never-ceasing anxiety. In her great love for him, the one thing she most desired was to _give_.