"Come, Claire," I said, after I had looked her in the eye a bit to calm her. "You know quite well that I was under no bond of secrecy. And, besides, I haven't done you any harm."

"Why did you do it?" I regret to add that she swore.

"I never once mentioned your name, Claire."

"How much good do you imagine that does me? They have managed to find out everything. They caught me in a trap."

I reminded myself that it would not do to show any pity for her. "Sit down, Claire," I said. "Tell me about it."

She cried, in a last burst of anger, "I don't want to talk to you!"

"All right," I answered. "But then, why did you come?"

There was no reply to that. She sat down. "They were too much for me!"

she lamented. "If I'd had the least hint, I might have held my own. As it was--I let them make a fool of me."

"You are talking hieroglyphics to me. Who are 'they'?"

"Douglas, and that old fox, Rossiter Torrance."

"Rossiter Torrance?" I repeated the name, and then suddenly remembered.

The thin-lipped old family lawyer!

"He sent up his card, and said he'd been sent to see me by Mary Abbot.

Of course, I had no suspicion--I fell right into the trap. We talked about you for a while--he even got me to tell him where you lived; and then at last he told me that he hadn't come from you at all, but had merely wanted to find out if I knew you, and how intimate we were. He had been sent by Douglas; and he wanted to know right away how much I had told you about Douglas, and why I had done it. Of course, I denied that I had told anything. Heavens, what a time he gave me!"

Claire paused. "Mary, how could you have played such a trick upon me?"

"I had no thought of doing you any harm," I replied. "I was simply trying to help Sylvia."

"To help her at any expense!"

"Tell me, what will come of it? Are you afraid they'll cut off your allowance?"

"That's the threat."

"But will they carry it out?"

She sat, gazing at me resentfully. "I don't know whether I ought to trust you any more," she said.

"Do what you please about that," I replied. "I don't want to urge you."

She hesitated a bit longer, and then decided to throw herself upon my mercy. They would not dare to carry out their threat, so long as Sylvia had not found out the whole truth. So now she had come to beg me to tell no more than I had already told. She was utterly abject about it. I had pretended to be her friend, I had won her confidence and listened to her confessions; how did I wish to ruin her utterly, to have her cast out on the street?

Poor Claire! I said in the early part of my story that she understood the language of idealism; but I wonder what I have told about her that justifies this. The truth is, she was going down so fast that already she seemed a different person; and she had been frightened by the thin-lipped old family lawyer, so that she was incapable of even a decent pretence.

"Claire," I said, "there is no need for you to go on like this. I have not the slightest intention of telling Sylvia about you. I cannot imagine the circ.u.mstances that would make me want to tell her. Even if I should do it, I would tell her in confidence, so that her husband would never have any idea----"

She went almost wild at this. To imagine that a woman would keep such a confidence! As if she would not throw it at her husband's head the first time they quarreled! Besides, if Sylvia knew this truth, she might leave him; and if she left him, Claire's hold on his money would be gone.

Over this money we had a long and lachrymose interview. And at the end of it, there she sat gazing into s.p.a.ce, baffled and bewildered. What kind of a woman was I? How had I got to be the friend of Sylvia van Tuiver? What had she seen in me, and what did I expect to get out of her? I answered briefly; and suddenly Claire was overwhelmed by a rush of curiosity--plain human curiosity. What was Sylvia like? Was she as clever as they said? What was the baby like, and how was Sylvia taking the misfortune? Could it really be true that I had been visiting the van Tuivers in Florida, as old Rossiter Torrance had implied?

Needless to say, I did not answer these questions freely. And I really think my visitor was more pained by my uncommunicativeness than she was by my betrayal of her. It was interesting also to notice a subtle difference in her treatment of me. Gone was the slight touch of condescension, gone was most of the familiarity! I had become a personage, a treasurer of high state secrets, an intimate of the great ones! There must be something more to me than Claire had realized before!

Poor Claire! She pa.s.ses here from this story. For years thereafter I used to catch a glimpse of her now and then, in the haunts of the birds of gorgeous plumage; but I never got a chance to speak to her, nor did she ever call on me again. So I do not know if Douglas van Tuiver still continues her eight thousand a year. All I can say is that when I saw her, her plumage was as gorgeous as ever, and its style duly certified to the world that it had not been held over from a previous season of prosperity. Twice I thought she had been drinking too much; but then--so had many of the other ladies with the little gla.s.ses of bright-coloured liquids before them.

8. For the rest of that year I knew nothing about Sylvia except what I read in the "society" column of my newspaper--that she was spending the late summer in her husband's castle in Scotland. I myself was suffering from the strain of what I had been through, and had to take a vacation.

I went West; and when I came back in the fall, to plunge again into my work, I read that the van Tuivers, in their yacht, the "Triton," were in the Mediterranean, and were planning to spend the winter in j.a.pan.

And then one day in January, like a bolt from the blue, came a cablegram from Sylvia, dated Cairo: "Sailing for New York, Steamship 'Atlantic,'

are you there, answer."

Of course I answered. And I consulted the sailing-lists, and waited, wild with impatience. She sent me a wireless, two days out, and so I was at the pier when the great vessel docked. Yes, there she was, waving her handkerchief to me; and there by her side stood her husband.

It was a long, cold ordeal, while the ship was warped in. We could only gaze at each other across the distance, and stamp our feet and beat our hands. There were other friends waiting for the van Tuivers, I saw, and so I held myself in the background, full of a thousand wild speculations. How incredible that Sylvia, arriving with her husband, should have summoned me to meet her!

At last the gangway was let down, and the stream of pa.s.sengers began to flow. In time came the van Tuivers, and their friends gathered to welcome them. I waited; and at last Sylvia came to me--outwardly calm--but with her emotions in the pressure of her two hands. "Oh, Mary, Mary!" she murmured. "I'm so glad to see you! I'm so glad to see you!"

"What has happened?" I asked.

Her voice went to a whisper. "I am leaving my husband."

"Leaving your husband!" I stood, dumbfounded.

"Leaving him for ever, Mary."

"But--but----" I could not finish the sentence. My eyes moved to where he stood, calmly chatting with his friends.

"He insisted on coming back with me, to preserve appearances. He is terrified of the gossip. He is going all the way home, and then leave me."

"Sylvia! What does it mean?" I whispered.

"I can't tell you here. I want to come and see you. Are you living at the same place?"

I answered in the affirmative.

"It's a long story," she added. "I must apologise for asking you to come here, where we can't talk. But I did it for an important reason. I can't make my husband really believe that I mean what I say; and you are my Declaration of Independence!" And she laughed, but a trifle wildly, and looking at her suddenly, I realized that she was keyed almost to the breaking point.

"You poor dear!" I murmured.

"I wanted to show him that I meant what I said. I wanted him to see us meet. You see, he's going home, thinking that with the help of my people he can make me change my mind."

"But why do you go home? Why not stay here with me? There's an apartment vacant next to mine."

"And with a baby?"

"There are lots of babies in our tenement," I said. But to tell the truth, I had almost forgotten the baby in the excitement of the moment.

"How is she," I asked.