"No one bothers so much about dressing now, stay and dine as you are."

"Yes, do," chimed in Stanisla.s.s timidly in Russian, "we should be so charmed."

"Very well--I will dine--but I must change. I shall not be long though.

Begin dinner without me, I will join you before the fish." And with no further waste of words he left them.

Harietta pushed Stanisla.s.s gently from the room with an injunction to be quick--and then she returned and held out her arms to Ferdinand Ardayre.

"Now you must not be jealous, Ferdie pet, about Verisschenzko," and she patted him. "It is business--I must talk to him to-night; he has an idea that you and I are not favourable to the Allies," and she laughed delightedly, "and I must get him off this notion!"

Ferdinand Ardayre looked sullen; he was burning with jealousy.

"Will you make it up to me afterwards?"

"But, of course, in the usual way!" and with one of her wonderful kisses Harietta went laughing from the room.

Left alone, the young man gave himself a morphine _piqure_, and then sat down and held his head in his hands.

He had heard, as he had told Harietta earlier in the afternoon, that his brother's wife was going to have a child, and he could find no way of proving legally that it could not be John's, so his venom had grown with his impotence.

His mother had said to him once:

"The accursed English will always beat us, my son. Thy real father would have put poison in their coffee. We can only hope for revenge some day. I fear we shall never gain our desires. The old fool whom thou callest father must be sucked dry of everything while he lives, because no quarter will be given us once the breath is out of his body."

Was this true? Must the English always beat him? He remembered his hatred of Denzil while at Eton, and the dog's life he had often led there. Well, he would hit back with an adder's sting when the chance came to him. He would like to see both Ardayres ruined and England herself in the dust, numbed and conquered. All his English life and education had never made him anything but an alien in thought and appearance.

It was his powerlessness which enraged him, but surely the day must come when he could make some of them suffer.

Harietta had not appeared in the hall when Verisschenzko returned dressed, and she even kept all three men waiting for about ten minutes, and then swept in resplendent in yellow brocade and the gardenias, when the clock had struck nine and most of the other diners were having their coffee.

The atmosphere of restraint and depression was a constant source of resentment to her. It was all very well to be dignified and refined for some definite end, like securing an unquestioned position, but it was a weariness of the flesh to have to keep up this role month after month with no excitement or reward, and every now and then she felt that she must break out even in small ways by wearing too gorgeous and unsuitable raiment. She wished that Germany would be quick about winning, then things could settle down and she could begin her social career again.

"It don't amount to a row of pins to the people who want to enjoy themselves, as I do, if their country is beaten or not; it'll all be the same six months after peace is declared, so I'm all for knocking whichever seems feeblest out quickly," she had said to Ferdinand, "and Paris will always be top of the world for clothes and things that one wants, so what do old politics matter?"

She derived some pleasure out of the sensation she created when she went into a restaurant, and she really looked extraordinarily handsome.

The dinner amused her, too; it was entertaining to make Ferdinand jealous. The emotions of Stanisla.s.s had ceased to count to her in any way whatsoever.

Verisschenzko had discovered what he required in regard to Ferdinand Ardayre before they went into the hall for coffee--there was nothing further to be gained by having another tete-a-tete with Harietta, so he sat down by Stanisla.s.s and suggested that the other two should go on to the Coliseum without them, and Harietta was obliged to depart reluctantly with Ferdinand, having arranged that Stepan should let her know, directly he arrived in Paris, whither he was going in a day or two also.

When she had left them Stanisla.s.s Boleski turned melancholy eyes to his old friend, but remained silent.

"Has it been worth it?" Verisschenzko asked, with certain feeling--they had relapsed into Russian.

Stanisla.s.s sighed deeply.

"No--far from it--I am broken and finished, Stepan, she has devoured my soul--"

"Why don't you kill her! I should."

The Pole clenched one of his transparent looking hands:

"I cannot--I desire her so--she is an obsession. I cannot work--she leaves me neither time nor brain. But I want her always, she is a burning torment, and a blast, and a sin. I see visions of the chance that I have missed, and then all is obliterated by her voluptuous kisses. I die each day with jealousy and shame. She withholds herself, and I would pay with the blood from my veins to possess her again!"

"You have no longer any delusions about her--you see her as a curse and a vampire?"

Stanisla.s.s reddened.

"I see everything, but I know only desire. Stepan, she has dragged me through every degradation. I am a witness of her unfaithfulness. She gives herself to this Turk with hardly a pretence of concealment--I know it--I burn with rage, and I can do nothing. She returns to my arms and I forget everything. I am a most unhappy man and only death can release me, and yet I wish to live because I love her. Each day is fierce longing for her--each night away from her h.e.l.l--" Tears sprang to his hopeless black eyes and his voice broke with emotion.

Verisschenzko looked at him and a rough pity tempered his contempt.

Here was a case where an indulgence having become master was exacting a hideous toll. But the net was drawing closer and when all the strands were in his hands he would act without mercy.

CHAPTER XVI

When Amaryllis knew that John was going to get a few days' leave at Christmas a strange nervousness took possession of her. The personality of Denzil had been growing more real to her ever since they had parted, in spite of her endeavours to discipline her mind and control all emotion. The thought of him and the thought of the baby were inseparable and were seldom absent from her consciousness. All sorts of wonderful emotions held her, and exalted her imagination until she felt that Denzil was part of her daily life--and with the double interest her love for him grew and grew.

She had only seen John during the day when he had come to bid her good-bye before leaving for the Front, and most of the time they had been surrounded by the de la Paule family. But now she would have to face the fact of living with him again in an intimate relationship.

The thought appeared awful to her. There was something in her nature which resembled that of the bride of King Caudaules. She could not support the idea of belonging now to John; it seemed to her that he must have no rights at all. She had written to him dutifully each week letters about the place and her Committees in the County. She had not once mentioned the coming child.

Denzil's mother had been ill and the visit to Bath had been postponed, and after a fortnight alone at Ardayre she had come up to London. She had too much time to think there.

Stepan had left her a list of books to get and she had been steadily reading them.

How horribly ignorant she had been! She realised that what knowledge she had possessed had never been centralised or brought to any use. She had known isolated histories of Europe, and never had studied them collectively or contemporarily to discover their effect upon human evolution. She had learned many things, and then never employed her critical faculties about them. A whole new world seemed to be opening to her view. She had determined not to be unhappy and not to look ahead, but in spite of these good resolutions she would often dream in the firelight of the joy of being clasped in Denzil's arms.

When she thought of John it was with tolerance more than affection. What did he really mean to her, denuded of the glamour with which she herself had surrounded him?

Practically nothing at all.

She was quite aware that her state of being was rendering all her mental and emotional faculties particularly sensitive, and she did her utmost to remember all Verisschenzko's counsel to discipline herself and remain serene. The morning John was expected to arrive she had a hard fight with herself. She felt very nervous and ill at ease. Above all things, she must not be unkind.

He was bronzed and looked well, he was more expansive also and plainly very glad to see her.

He held her close to him and bent to kiss her lips; but some undefined reluctance came over her, and she moved her head aside.

Something in her resented the caress. Her lips were now for Denzil and for no other man. It was she who was recalcitrant and turned the conversation into everyday things.

The de la Paule family had been summoned for luncheon and the afternoon pa.s.sed among them all, and then the evening and the tete-a-tete dinner came.

John knocked at the door of her room while she was dressing. Her maid had just finished her hair and she wondered at herself that she should experience a sense of shyness and have to suppress an inclination to refuse to let him come in. And once any of these little intimate happenings would have given her joy!

She kept Adams there, and hurried into her tea-gown and then walked towards the door.