Absurdly primitive, such ideas as these! Seated with Maltby Phar in my study, I had laughed them out of court many a time; for I could talk pure Bernard Shaw--our prophet of those days--with anybody, and even go him one better. But when it came to the pinch of decisive action I had always thrown back to my sources and left the responsibility on them. I did so now.

Yet it was hard to speak of anything but enchantment, witchery, fascination, when, from her desk, Susan looked round to me, faintly puzzled, faintly smiling. She was not a pretty girl, as young America--its taste superbly catered to by popular magazines--understands that phrase; nor was she beautiful by any severe cla.s.sic standard--unless you are willing to accept certain early Italians as having established cla.s.sic standards; not such faultless painters as Raphael or Andrea del Sarto, but three or four of the wayward lesser men whose strangely personal vision created new and unexpected types of loveliness. Not that I recall a single head by any one of them that prefigured Susan; not that I am helping you, baffled reader, to see her.

Words are a dull medium for portraiture, or I am too dull a dog to catch with them even a phantasmal likeness. It is the mixture of dark and bright in Susan that eludes me; she is all soft shadow and sharpest gleams. But that is nonsense. I give it up.

It was really, then, a triumph for my ancestors that I did not throw myself on my knees beside her chair--the true romantic att.i.tude, when all's said--and draw her dark-bright face down to mine. I halted instead just within the doorway, retaining a deathlike grip on the door-k.n.o.b.

"Dear," I blurted, "it won't do. It's the end of the road. We can't go on."

"Can we turn back?" asked Susan.

I wonder the solid bronze k.n.o.b did not shatter like hollow gla.s.s in my hand.

"You must help me," I muttered.

"Yes," said Susan, all quiet shadow now, gleamless; "I'll help you."

Half an hour after I left her she telephoned and dispatched the following telegram, signed "Susan Blake," to Gertrude at her New York address:

"_Either come back to him or set him free. Urgent._"

VI

The reply--a note from Gertrude, the ink hardly dry on it, written from the Egyptian tomb of the Misses Carstairs--came directly to me that evening; and Mrs. Parrot was the messenger. Her expression, as she mutely handed me the note, was ineffable. I read the note with sensations of suffocation; an answer was requested.

"Tell Mrs. Hunt," I said firmly to Mrs. Parrot, "that it was she who left me, and I am stubbornly determined to make no advances. If she cares to see me I shall be glad to see her. She has only to walk a few yards, climb a few easy steps, and ring the bell."

My courtesy was truly elaborate as I conducted Mrs. Parrot to the door.

Her response was disturbing.

"It's not for me to make observations," said Mrs. Parrot, "the situation being delicate, and not likely to improve. But if I was you, Mr. Hunt, I'd not be too stiff. No; I'd not be. I would not. No. Not if I valued the young lady's reputation."

Like the Pope's mule, Mrs. Parrot had saved her kick many years. I can testify to its power.

Thirty minutes later this superkick landed me, when I came crashing back to earth, at the door of the Egyptian tomb.

"How hard it is," says Dante, "to climb another's stairs," and he might have added to ring another's bell, under certain conditions of spiritual humiliation and stress. Thank the G.o.ds--all of them--it was not Mrs.

Parrot who admitted me and took my card!

I waited miserably in the large, ill-lighted reception vault of the tomb, which smelt appropriately of lilies, as if the undertaker had recently done his worst. How well I remembered it, how long I had avoided it! It was here of all places, under the contemptuous eye of old Ephraim Carstairs, grim ancestral founder of this family's fortunes, that Gertrude had at last consented to be my wife. And there he still lorded it above the fireplace, unchanged, glaring down malignantly through the shadows, his stiff neck bandaged like a mummy's, his hard, high cheek bones and cavernous eyes making him the very image of bugaboo death. What an eavesdropper for the approaching reconciliation; for that was what it had come to. That was what it would have to be!

It was not Gertrude who came down to me; it was Lucette. Lucette--all graciousness, all sympathetic understanding, all feline smiles! Dear Gertrude had 'phoned her on arriving, and she had rushed to her at once!

Dear Gertrude had such a desperate headache! She couldn't possibly see me to-night. She was really ill, had been growing rapidly worse for an hour. Perhaps to-morrow?

I was in no mood to be tricked by this stale subterfuge.

"See here, Lucette," I said sternly, "I'm not going to fence with you or fool round at cross purposes. Less than an hour ago Gertrude sent over a note, asking me to call."

"To which you returned an insufferable verbal reply."

"A bad-tempered reply, I admit. No insult was intended. And I've come now to apologize for the temper."

"Oh, dear!" sighed Lucette. "Men always do their thinking too late. I wish I could rea.s.sure you; but the mischief seems to be done. Poor Gertrude is furious."

"Then the headache is--hypothetical?"

"An excuse, you mean? I wish it were, for her sake!" Lucette's eyes positively caressed me, as a tiger might lick the still-warm muzzle of an antelope, its proximate meal. "If you could see her face, poor creature! She's in torment."

"I'm sorry."

"Isn't that--what you called her headache?"

"No. I'm ashamed of my boorishness. Let me see Gertrude and tell her so."

Lucette smiled, slightly shaking her head. "Impossible--till she's feeling better. And not then--unless she changes her mind. You see, Ambrose, Mrs. Parrot's version of your reply was the last straw."

"No doubt she improved on the original," I muttered.

"Oh, no doubt," agreed Lucette calmly. "She would. It was silly of you not to think of that."

"Yes," I snapped. "Men always underestimate a woman's malice."

"They have so many distractions, poor dears. Men, I mean. And we have so few. You can put that in your next article, Ambrose?" She straightened her languid curves deliberately, as if preparing to rise.

"Please!" I exclaimed. "I'm not ready for dismissal yet. We'll get down to facts, if you don't mind. Why is Gertrude here at all? After years of silence? Did you send for her?"

Lucette's spine slowly relaxed, her shoulders drooped once more. "I? My dear Ambrose, why on earth should I do a thing like that?"

"I don't know. The point is, did you?"

"You think it in character?"

"Oh--be candid! I don't mean directly, of course. But is she here because of anything you may have telephoned her--after your call last night?"

"Really, Ambrose! This is a little too much, even from you."

"Forgive me--I insist! Is she?"

"You must have a very bad conscience," replied Lucette.

"I am more interested in yours."

She laughed luxuriously, "Mine has never been clearer."

Did the woman want me to stop her breath with bare hands? I gripped the mahogany arms of my stiff Chippendale chair.

"Listen to me, Lucette! I know this is all very thrilling and amusing for you. Vivisection must have its charms, of course--for an expert. But I venture to remind you that once upon a time you were not a bad-hearted girl, and you must have some remnants of human sympathy about you somewhere. Am I wrong?"

"You're hideously rude."