"And now you're going to tell me where she is and I'm to take her home and keep her out of his way. Is that it?"

"I don't know," said Lady St. Craye very truly, "why I came to you at all. Because it's all no good. He's written and proposed for her to her father--and if she cares--"

"Well, if she cares--and he cares--Do you really mean that _you'd_ care to marry a man who's in love with another woman?"

"I'd marry him if he was in love with fifty other women."

"In that case," said Miss Desmond, "I should say you were the very wife for him."

"_She_ isn't," said Lady St. Craye sitting up. "I feel like a silly school-girl talking to you like this. I think I'll go now. I'm not really so silly as I seem. I've been ill--influenza, you know--and I got so frightfully tired. And I don't think I'm so strong as I used to be. I've always thought I was strong enough to play any part I wanted to play. But--you've been very kind. I'll go--" She lay back.

"Don't be silly," said Miss Desmond briskly. "You _are_ a school-girl compared with me, you know. I suppose you've been trying to play the role of the designing heroine--to part true lovers and so on, and then you found you couldn't."

"They're _not_ true lovers," said Lady St. Craye eagerly; "that's just it. She'd never make him happy. She's too young and too innocent. And when she found out what a man like him is like, she'd break her heart.

And he told me he'd be happier with me than he ever had been with her."

"Was that true, or--?"

"Oh, yes, it was true enough, though he said it. You've met him--he told me. But you don't know him."

"I know his kind though," said Miss Desmond. "And so you love him very much indeed, and you don't care for anything else,--and you think you understand him,--and you could forgive him everything? Then you may get him yet, if you care so very much--that is, if Betty doesn't."

"She doesn't. She thinks she does, but she doesn't. If only he hadn't written to her--"

"My dear," said Miss Desmond, "I was a fool myself once, about a man with eyes his colour. You can't tell me anything that I don't know.

Does he know how much you care?"

"Yes."

"Ah, that's a pity--still--Well, is there anything else you want to tell me?"

"I don't want to tell anyone anything. Only--when she said she'd go away, I advised her where to go--and I told her of a quiet place--and Mr. Temple's there. He's the other man who admires her."

"I see. How Machiavelian of you!"--Miss Desmond touched the younger woman's hand with brusque gentleness--"And--?"

"And I didn't quite tell her the truth about Mr. Vernon and me," said Lady St. Craye, wallowing in the abject joys of the confessional. "And I am a beast and not fit to live. But," she added with the true penitent's instinct of self-defence, "I _know_ it's only--oh, I don't know what--not love, with her. And it's my life."

"Yes. And what about him?"

"It's not love with him. At least it is--but she'd bore him. It's really his waking-up time. He's been playing the game just for counters all the while. Now he's learning to play with gold."

"And it'll stay learnt. I see," said Miss Desmond. "Look here, I like you. I know we shouldn't have said all we have if you weren't ill, and I weren't anxious. But I'm with you in one thing. I don't want him to marry Betty. She wouldn't understand an artist in emotion. Is this Temple straight?"

"As a yardstick."

"And as wooden? Well, that's better. I'm on your side. But--we've been talking without the veils on--tell me one thing. Are you sure you could get him if Betty were out of the way?"

"He kissed me once--since he's loved her," said Lady St. Craye, "and then I knew I could. He liked me better than he liked her--in all the other ways--before. I'm a shameless idiot; it's really only because I'm so feeble."

She rose and stood before the gla.s.s, putting on her hat.

"I do respect a woman who has the courage to speak the truth to another woman," said Miss Desmond. "I hope you'll get him--though it's not a very kind wish."

Lady St. Craye let herself go completely in a phrase whose memory stung and rankled for many a long day.

"Ah," she said, "even if he gets tired of me, I shall have got his children. You don't know what it is to want a child. Good-bye."

"Good-bye," said Miss Desmond. "No--of course I don't."

CHAPTER XXV.

THE FOREST.

Nothing lifts the heart like the sense of a great self-sacrifice n.o.bly made. Betty was glad that she could feel so particularly n.o.ble. It was a great help.

"He was mine," she told herself; "he meant to be--And I have given him up to her. It hurts--yes--but I did the right thing."

She thought she hoped that he would soon forget her. And almost all that was Betty tried quite sincerely, s.n.a.t.c.hing at every help, to forget him.

Sometimes the Betty that Betty did not want to be would, quite deliberately and of set purpose, take out the nest of hungry memories, look at them, play with them, and hand over her heart for them to feed on. But always when she had done this she felt, afterwards, a little sorry, a little ashamed. It was too like the diary at Long Barton.

Consciously or unconsciously one must make some concessions to every situation or every situation would be impossible. Temple was here--interested, pleased to see her, glad to talk to her. But he was not at all inclined to be in love with her: that had been only a silly fancy of hers--in Paris. He had made up his mind by now who it was that he cared for. And it wasn't Betty. Probably she hadn't even been one of the two he came to Grez to think about. He was only a good friend--and she wanted a good friend. If he were not just a good friend the situation would be impossible. And Betty chose that the situation should be possible. For it was pleasant. It was a shield and a shelter from all the thoughts that she wanted to hide from.

"If she thinks I'm going to break my heart about _him_, she's mistaken. And so's He. I must be miserable for a bit," said Betty bravely, "but I'll not be miserable forever, so he needn't think it.

Of course, I shall never care for anyone ever again--unless he were to love me for years and years before he ever said a word, and then I might say I would try.--_And_ try. But fall in love?--Never again! Oh, good gracious, there he is,--and I've not _begun_ to get ready."

Temple was whistling _Deux Amants_ very softly in the courtyard below.

She put her head out of the window.

"I shan't be two minutes," she said, "You might get the basket from Madame; and my sketching things are on the terrace all ready strapped up."

The hoofs of the smart gray pony slipped and rattled on the cobble-stones of the hotel entry.

"Au revoir: amuse yourselves well, my children." Madame Chevillon stood, one hand on fat hip, the other shading old eyes that they might watch the progress of the cart up the blinding whiteness of the village street.

"To the forest, and yet again to the forest and to the forest always,"

she said, turning into the darkened billiard room. "Marie, beware, thou, of the forest. The good G.o.d created it express for the lovers,--but it is permitted to the devil to promenade himself there also."

"Those two there," said Marie--"it is very certain that they are in love?"

"How otherwise?" said Madame. "The good G.o.d made us women that the men should be in love with us--and afterwards, to take care of the children. There is no other use that a man has for a woman.

Friendship? The Art?--Bah! When a man wants those he demands them of a man. Of a woman he demands but love, and one gives it to him--one gives it to him without question!"

The two who had departed for the forest drove on through the swimming, spinning heat, in silence.