"When I--when we are both sure, I shall act. There are ways out. It ought not to be difficult."

"No, quite easy, I think. I hope it will not be long."

His mask of reasonable acquiescence slipped a little at the wistfulness of her voice.

"Don't speak like that!" he said sharply. "No man is worth it."

Desire smiled. It was such a sure, secret little smile, that it maddened him.

"You can't--you can't care like that!" he said in a low, furious tone.

"You said you never could!"

"I do," said Desire.

It was the avowal which she had sworn she would never make. Yet she made it without shame. Love had taught Desire much since the day of the episode of the photograph. And one of its teachings had to do with the comparative insignificance of pride. Why should he not know that she loved him? Of what use a gift that is never given? Besides, as this leaden week had pa.s.sed, she knew that, more than anything else, she wanted truth between them. Now, when he asked it of her, she gave him truth.

"It is breaking our bargain," she went on with a wavering smile. "But I was so sure! I cannot even blame myself. It must be possible to be quite sure and quite wrong at the same time."

"Yes. There is no blame, anywhere. I--I didn't think of what I was saying."

"Well, then--you will guess that it isn't exactly easy. But I will wait as you ask me. When you are quite sure--you will let me go?"

"Yes," he said.

Neither of them looked at the other.

Does Jove indeed laugh at lover's perjuries? Even more at their stupidities, perhaps!

CHAPTER x.x.xII

For they really were stupid! Looking on, we can see so plainly what they should have seen, and didn't.

If thoughts are things (and Professor Spence continues to argue that they are) a mistaken thought is quite as powerful a reality as the other kind. Only let it be conceived with sufficient force and nourished by continual attention and it will grow into a veritable highwayman of the mind--a thievish tyrant of one's mental roads, holding their more legitimate travellers at the stand and deliver.

Desire, usually so clearsighted, ought to have seen that the attentions of Benis to the too-sympathetic Mary were hollow at the core. But this, her mistaken Thought would by no means allow. Ceaselessly on the watch, it leapt upon every unprejudiced deduction and turned it to the strengthening of its own mistaken self. What might have seemed merely boredom on the professor's part was twisted by the Thought to appear an anguished effort after self-control. Any avoidance of Mary's society was attributed to fear rather than to indifference. And so on and so on.

Spence, too, a man learned in the byways of the mind, ought to have known that, to Desire, John was a refuge merely, and Mary the real lion in the way. But his mistaken Thought, born of a smile and a photograph, grew steadily stronger and waxed fat upon the everyday trivialities which should have slain it. So powerful had it become that, by the time of Desire's arrival on the veranda, it had closed every road of interpretation save its own.

Nor was John in more reasonable case. His mistaken Thought was different in action but equally successful in effect. Born of an insistent desire, and nursed by half fearful hope, it stood a beggar at the door of life, s.n.a.t.c.hing from every pa.s.sing circ.u.mstance the crumbs by which it lived. Did Desire smile--how eagerly John's famished Thought would claim it for his own. Did she frown--how quick it was to find some foreign cause for frowning. And, as Desire woke to love under his eyes, how ceaselessly it worked to add belief to hope. How plausibly it reasoned, how cleverly it justified! That Spence loved his wife, the Thought would not accept as possible. All John's actual knowledge of the depth and steadfastness of his friend's nature was pooh-poohed or ignored. Benis, dear old chap, cared nothing for women.

Hadn't he always shunned them in his quiet way? And hadn't he, John, warned Benis, anyway? The Thought insisted upon the warning with virtuous emphasis. It pointed out that Benis had laughed at the warning. Even if--but we need not follow John's excursions further.

They all led through devious ways to the old, old justification of everything in love and war.

As time went on, the thing which fed the mistaken thoughts of both Benis and John was the change in Desire herself. That she was increasingly unhappy was evident to both. And why should she be unhappy--unless?

To John Rogers, that summer remained the most distracting summer of his life. Desire should have seen this--would have seen it had her mind-roads not been closed by their own obsession. The probability is that she did not consciously think of John at all. He was there and he was kind. She saw nothing farther than that.

The relationship between the two men remained apparently the same and indeed it is likely that, in the main, their conception one of the other did not change. To Benis, John's virtues were still as real and admirable as ever. To John, Benis was still a bit of a mystery and a bit of a hero>. (There were war stories which John knew but had never dared to tell, lest vengeance befall him.) But, these basic things aside, there were new points of view. Seen as a possible mate for Desire, Benis found John most lamentably lacking. Seen in the same light, Benis to John was undesirable in the extreme. "If it could only be someone more subtle than John," thought Benis. And, "If only old Benis were a bit more stable," thought John. Both were insincere, since no possible combination of qualities would have satisfied either.

Of this fatally misled quartette, Mary Davis was perhaps the one most open to reason. And yet not altogether so, for the thought of Benis Spence as eternally escaped was not a welcome one. She realized now that she might have liked the elusive professor more than a little.

They would have been, she thought, admirably suited. At the worst, neither would have bored the other. And the Spence home was quite possible--as a home for part of the year at least. It was certainly annoying that fate should have cut in so unexpectedly. And for what?

Apparently for nothing but that a girl with grey, enigmatic eyes and close-shut lips should keep from Mary a position which she did not want herself. For Mary, captive of her Thought, was more than ready to believe that Desire's hidden preference was for John. She naturally could not grant her rival a share of her own discriminating taste in loving.

"I suppose," thought Mary, "it is her immaturity which makes her prefer the doctor person to one who so far outranks him. She admires sleek hair and a straight nose. The finer fascinations of Benis escape her."

Meanwhile she stayed on.

"I know I should come home," she wrote the most select of the select friends. "And I know dear Miss Campion thinks so! But the situation here is too absorbing. And, as my invitation was indefinite, I can hardly be accused of outstaying it. I can't be supposed to know that I'm not wanted. I justify myself by the knowledge that I am of some use to Benis. You know I can interest most men when I try, and this time my 'heart is in it'--like Sentimental Tommy. I am even teaching a perfectly dear parrot they have here to sing, 'Oh, What a Pal was Mary.' Will you run over to my rooms and send down that London smoke chiffon frock with the silver underslip? Stockings and slippers to match in a box in the bottom drawer. I am contemplating a moon-light mood and must have the accessories. One loses half the effect if one does not dress the part. Madam Enigma never dresses in character.

Because she never a.s.sumes one. So dull to be always just oneself, don't you think? Even if one knew what one's real self is, which I am sure I do not.

"This girl annoys me. How she can be so simple and yet so complex I can't understand. I thought perhaps a dash of jealousy might be revealing. But she hasn't turned a hair. I have my emotions pretty well in hand myself but even if I didn't adore my husband, I'd see that no one else appropriated him. But as far as Madam Coolness is concerned it looks as if I might put her husband in my pocket and keep him there indefinitely.

"I told you in my last about the good-looking doctor. What she sees in him puzzles me. He is handsome but as dull as all the proverbs. Can't be original even in his love affairs--otherwise he would hardly select his best friend's bride--so bookish! Why doesn't someone fall in love with the wife of his enemy? It seems to have gone out since Romeo's time. (Now don't write and tell me that Juliet wasn't married.)

"Another thing which I find odd, is the att.i.tude of Benis himself. He is quite alive, painfully so, to the drift of the thing. Yet he does nothing. And this is not in keeping with his character. He is the type of man who, in spite of an una.s.sertive manner, holds what he has with no uncertain grasp. Why, then, does he let this one thing go? The logical deduction is that he knows that he never had it. All of which, being interpreted, means that things may happen here through the sheer inertia of other things. Almost every day I think, 'Something ought to be done.' But I know I shall never do it. I am not the novelist's villainess who arranges a compromising situation and produces the surprised husband from behind a door. Neither am I a peacemaker or an altruist. I am not selfish enough in one way nor un-selfish enough in another. (Probably that is why life has lost interest in my special case.) Even my emotions are hopelessly mixed. There are times when I find myself viciously hoping that Madam Composure will go the limit and that right quickly. And there are other times when I feel I should like to choke her into a proper realization of what she is risking. Not for her sake--I'm far too feminine for that--but because I hate to see her play with this man (whom I like myself) and get away with it."

It is worth while remembering the closing sentences of this letter.

They explain, or partially explain, a certain future action on the part of the writer, which might otherwise seem out of keeping with her well defined att.i.tude of "Mary first."

CHAPTER x.x.xIII

"There is one thing which I simply do not understand." Miss Davis dug the point of a destructive parasol into the well-kept gravel of the drive and allowed a glance of deep seriousness to drift from under the shadow of her hat. Unfortunately, her companion was not attending.

It was the day of Mrs. Burton Jones' garden party, the Bainbridge event for which Miss Davis was, presumably, staying over. Mary, in a new frock of sheerest grey and most diaphanous white, and a hat which lay like a breath of mist against the gold of her hair, had come down early. In the course of an observant career, she had learned that, in one respect at least, men are like worms. They are inclined to be early. Mary had often profited by this bit of wisdom, and was glad that so few other women seemed to realize its importance. One can do much with ten or fifteen uninterrupted minutes.

But today Mary had not done much. She had found Benis, as she expected, on the front steps. They had talked for quite ten minutes without an interruption--but also without any reason to deplore one.

This was failure. And Mary, whose love of the chase grew as the quarry proved shy, was beginning to be seriously annoyed with Benis. He might at least play up! Even now he was not looking at her, and he did not ask her what it was that she simply did not understand. Mary decided that he deserved something--a pin-p.r.i.c.k at least.

"Why don't you get a car, Benis?" she asked inconsequently. "If you had one, Desire might ride in it some-times, instead of always in Dr.

Rogers'. Can't you see that it's dangerous?"

"One has to take risks," said Spence plaintively. "John is careless.

But he has never killed anyone yet."

"You're impossible, Benis."

"Yes, I know. But particularly impossible as a chauffeur. That's why I haven't a car. What would I do with a driver when I wasn't using him?

Desire will have a car of her own as soon as she likes to try it. Aunt won't drive and I--don't."

This was the first approach to a personal remark the professor had made. No one was in sight yet and Mary began to hope again. Once more she tried the gently serious gaze.

"Why not?" she asked, not too eagerly.