"I was considering the moral support of it, of course," resumed Mrs.

Payne. "First of all I would advise some inspiring religious conviction, but as religion does not appeal to her, I suggested bridge."

"It might as well be white rabbits, I don't see the difference,"

protested Angela, rolling over upon her side with a despairing movement of fatigue.

"The difference, my dear, is that white rabbits are dirty little beasts," observed the elder woman.

Angela lay back upon her sofa and regarded her sister with a smile sharp and cold as the edge of a knife. "I wonder why you were more fortunate than I, Rosa," she said, after a pause, "for in my heart I was always a better woman."

Mrs. Payne laughed her hard little mirthless laugh, and stretched out her withered hand with a melodramatic gesture. "But I was never a fool, my dear," was her retort, "and there are few women of whom it can be said with truth that they were never at any time, from the beginning to the end of their career, a fool. n.o.body is a fool always, but there are very few people who escape it throughout their lives."

"Oh, I was," sighed Angela submissively, "I know it, but I was punished."

"It is the one thing for which we can count quite certainly upon being punished in this life," remarked Mrs. Payne, with a kind of moral satisfaction, as of one who was ranged upon the side of worldliness if not of righteousness. "Other sins are for eternity, I suppose, but I have never yet seen a fool escape the deserts of his folly. It is the one reason which has always made me believe so firmly in an overruling Providence. Are you going out, my child?" she asked, as Laura rose.

"I am stifling for want of air," replied the girl, shrinking away from the unnatural flash of her aunt's eyes. "I'll read to aunt Angela when I come in, but just now I must get out." Then as Mrs. Payne still sought to detain her, she broke away and ran rapidly down into the street.

But she was no sooner out of doors than it seemed to her that she ought to have stayed in her room--that the minutes would have pa.s.sed more swiftly in unbroken quiet. Her senses were absorbed in the single desire to have the day over--to begin to-morrow; and it seemed to her that when once the night was gone, she would be able to collect her thoughts with clearness, that the morning would bring some lucid explanation of the disturbance that she felt to-day. Then it occurred to her that she would follow Gerty's example and seek a distraction in the shops, and she took a cab and drove to her milliner's, where she tried on a number of absurdly impossible hats. She bought one at last, to realise immediately as she left the shop that she would never persuade herself to wear it because she felt that it gave her an air of Gerty's "smartness" which sat like an impertinence upon her own individual charm. Glancing at her watch she found that only two hours had gone since she left the house, and turning up the street she walked on with a step which seemed striving to match in energy her rapid thoughts.

"You have effaced every other impression of my life," he had said to her yesterday; and as she repeated the words she remembered the quiver of his mouth under his short brown moustache, the playful irony of the smile that had met her own. Had he meant more or less than the spoken phrase? Was the strength of his handclasp sincere? Or was the caressing sound of his voice a lie, as Gerty believed? Was he, in truth, fighting under all the shams of life for the liberation of his soul? or was there only the emptiness of sense within him, after all? She felt his burning look again, and flinched at the memory. "Every glance, every gesture, every word speaks to me of things which he cannot utter, which are unutterable," and yet even with the a.s.surance she felt as if she were living in an obscure and painful dream--as if the element of unreality were a part of his smile, of his voice, of the feverish longing from which she told herself that she would presently awake. It was as if she moved an illusion among illusions, and yet felt the unreal quality of herself and of the things outside.

CHAPTER IX

THE TRIUMPH OF THE EGO

He came punctually at three o'clock on the following afternoon, and even as he entered the room, she was conscious of a slight disappointment because, in some perfectly indefinable way, he was different from what she had hoped that he would be.

"This is the first peaceful moment I have had for twenty-four hours," he remarked, as he flung himself into a chair before the small wood fire; "a man I knew was inconsiderate enough to die and make me the guardian of his son, and I've had to overhaul the chap's property almost before the funeral was over."

A frown of nervous irritation wrinkled his forehead, but as he turned to her it faded quickly before the kindling animation in his look. "By Jove, I've thought of you every single minute since I was here," he pursued. "What a persistent way you have of interfering with a fellow's peace of mind. I've known nothing like it in my life."

"I hope at least I didn't damage the property," she observed, and almost with the words she wondered why she had longed so pa.s.sionately yesterday for his presence. Now that he had come she felt neither the delight of realised expectation nor the final peace of renouncement.

"Well, it wasn't your fault if you didn't," he replied, leaning his head against the chair-back and looking at her with his intimate and charming smile. "I had to fight hard enough to keep you out even of the stocks.

Was I as much in your way, I wonder?"

She shook her head. "In my way? I wouldn't allow it. Why should I?"

"Why, indeed?" his genial irony was in his glance and he held her gaze until she felt the warm blood mount swiftly to her forehead. "Why, indeed unless you wanted to?" he laughed.

His eyes moved to the window, and she followed the large, slightly coa.r.s.ened features of his profile and the fullness of his jaw which lent a suggestion of brutality to his averted face. Was it possible that she found an attraction in mere animal vitality? She wondered; then his caressing glance was turned upon her, and she forgot to ask herself the useless question.

"So I must presume, then, that I haven't disturbed you?" he enquired gayly.

Her eyes lingered upon him for a moment before she answered. "Oh, no, it wasn't you, it was Gerty," she replied.

He drew nearer until the arm of his chair touched her own. "I thought at least that my character was safe with Gerty," he exclaimed, not without the annoyance of an easily aroused vanity.

"I don't know what you'd think about the danger," she returned with seriousness, "but I simply hate the kind of things she told me."

His frown returned with gathered energy. "Is that so? What were they?"

"Oh, I don't know--nothing definite--but about women generally."

"Women! Pshaw! You're the only woman. There isn't any other on the earth."

Her hand lay on the arm of her chair, and he reached out and grasped her wrist, not gently, but with a violent pressure. "I'll swear there isn't another woman in existence," he exclaimed.

An electric current started from his fingers through the length of her arm; she felt it burning into her flesh as it travelled quickly from her wrist to her heart. For one breathless moment she was conscious of his presence as of a powerful physical force, and the sensation came to her that she was being lifted from her feet and swept blindly out into s.p.a.ce. Then, drawing slightly away, she released herself from his grasp.

"I give you fair warning that if you repeat that for the third time, I shall believe it," she retorted coolly.

"I'm trying to make you," he returned in a strained voice. "Why are you such a sceptic, I wonder," he added as he fell back into his chair.

"Can't you tell the real thing when you come across it?"

"The real thing?" Her words were almost a whisper.

"Are you so used to shams that you don't recognise a man's love when you see it?"

She leaned toward him, her black brows drawn together with the sombre questioning look which had always fascinated him by its strangeness.

Beyond the look, what was there? he asked with an intense and eager curiosity. What pa.s.sionate surprises existed in her? What secret suggestions of a still undiscovered charm? The wonder of her temperament rose before him, exquisite, remote, alluring, and he felt the appeal she made thrill like the spirit of adventure through his blood. Again he stretched out his hand, but with a frown he drew it back before it touched her.

"Can't you see that I love you?" he said with an angry hoa.r.s.eness.

His face, his voice, the gesture of his outstretched hand startled her into a quick feeling of terror, and she shrank back with a childlike movement of alarm. Where was her dream, she demanded with an instinctive repulsion, if this was the only living reality of love? Then his face changed abruptly beneath her look, and as the strong tenderness of his smile enveloped her, she was conscious of a sudden ecstasy of peace.

"Did I frighten you?" he asked, smiling.

She shook her head, resting her fingers for an instant upon his hand. "I don't believe you could frighten me if you tried," she answered.

He raised his eyebrows with his characteristic blithe interrogation, "Well, I shouldn't like to try, that's all."

"I give you leave--my courage is my shield."

"But I don't want to frighten you." His voice was softer than she had ever heard it. "We aren't afraid of those we love, you know."

"Why should I love you?" she enquired gayly.

His pleasant irony was in his laugh. "Because you can't help yourself--you're obliged to--it's your fate."

She frowned slightly. "I have no fate except the one I make for myself."

He bent toward her and this time his hand closed with determination upon hers. "Well, you may make me what you please," he said.