"And book writing," said Mrs. Keene, "so fatiguing! So liable to occupy one's attention--to the exclusion of other matters.... The dear professor.... So bound up in the marvels of the human brain!"

"Not brain, mind," corrected Mary gently. "The professor is a psychologist."

"Well, of course if you wish to separate them, in a scriptural sense.

But what I mean is that such biological studies are dangerous. So absorbing. When one examines things through a microscope--"

"One doesn't--in psychology."

"Well, perhaps not so much as formerly, especially since vivisection is so looked down upon. But it is terribly absorbing, as I say. And one can hardly expect an absorbed man to see things. And yet--"

"What is it," asked Mary bluntly, "that you think Professor Spence ought to see?"

This was entirely too blunt for Mrs. Keene. She, in her turn, looked blank. What did Miss Davis mean? She was not aware that she had suggested the professor's seeing anything. Probably there was nothing at all to see. Young people have such lat.i.tude nowadays. She herself was not a gossip. She despised gossip. "What I always say," declared she, virtuously, "is 'do not hint thing's.' Say them right out and then we shall know where we are. Don't you think so?"

Mary agreed that, under these conditions also, one might be fairly sure of one's position in s.p.a.ce. "Unless," she concluded maliciously, "there is anything in the Einstein theory."

This latter shot had the effect intended, for Mrs. Keene said hurriedly, "Oh, of course in that case--" and moved away.

"I'm going home, Mary," said Aunt Caroline, coming up. Aunt Caroline had had enough garden party. She had noticed both the rescue of Desire by John, and the conversation of Mary with Mrs. Keene--the "worst old gossip in Bainbridge."

Desire was quite ready to go. So was Mary. The centre of attraction for them both had shifted itself. John too, felt that he ought to turn up at the office. But all three ladies politely declined a lift home in his car.

"It is so hot," he pleaded.

"It is not hot," said Aunt Caroline.

Mary smiled mockingly and murmured something about the great distances of small towns. Desire said, "No, thank you, John," in her detached way--a way which drove him mad even while he adored it.

So the Burton-Jones garden party faded into history. But history-in-the-making caught up its effects and carried them on....

It was a lovely night. But indoors it was hot with the acc.u.mulated heat of the day. Instead of going to bed, Mary slipped out into the garden.

It was fresher there, and she was restless. The front of the house lay in darkness, but, from the library window at the side, stretched a ribbon of light. Benis must be still at work. With slippers which made no sound upon the gra.s.s, Mary crossed over to the window and looked in.

What she saw there stung her already fretted soul to unreasoning anger, and for once the circ.u.mspect Miss Davis acted upon impulse undeterred by thought. Entering the house softly, she ran upstairs to the west room which she entered without knocking.

Desire, seated at the dressing table, turned in surprise. She was ready for bed, but lingered over the brushing of her hair. With another spasm of anger, Mary noticed the hair she brushed--hair long and l.u.s.trous and lifted in soft waves. A pink kimona lay across the back of her chair, a pretty thing--but not at all French.

"Put it on," said Mary, "and come here. I want to show you something."

Desire did not ask "What?" Nor did she keep Mary waiting. Pleasant or unpleasant, it was not Desire's way to delay revelation. Together the two girls hurried out into the dew-sweet garden. As they went, Mary spoke in gusty sentences.

"I don't care what you do." (She was almost sobbing in her anger.) "I don't understand you.... I don't want to.... But you're not going to get away with it ... that cool air of yours ... pretending not to see.... If you are human at all you'll see ... and remember all your life."

They were close to the library window now. Desire looked in.

She looked so long and stood so still that Mary had time to get back a little of her breath and something of her common sense. An instinct which her selfish life had pretty well buried began to stir.

"Come away," she whispered, "I shouldn't have ... it wasn't fair ... he would never forgive us if he knew we had seen him like this!"

Desire drew back instantly.

"No," she said. Her voice was toneless. Her face in the darkness gleamed wedge-shaped and unfamiliar between the falling waves of her hair.

"I'm sorry," said Mary sulkily. "But I thought you ought to know what you are doing. It takes a lot to break up a man like that."

"Yes," said Desire. "All the same I had no right--"

"You will have," said Desire evenly.

They were at her door now. She paused with her hand on the k.n.o.b.

"I knew he cared," she said in the same level voice, "but I didn't know that he cared like that."

"You know now," said Mary. Her irritation was returning.

"Yes," said Desire. "Good-night."

She opened the door and went in.

CHAPTER x.x.xIV

It seems incredible and yet it is a fact that Bainbridge never knew that young Mrs. Spence had run away. Full credit for this must be given to Miss Caroline Campion, who never really believed it herself--a mental limitation which lent the necessary air of unemphasized truth to her statement that Desire had been summoned suddenly to her father.

Miss Campion had, in her own mind, built up an imaginary Dr. Farr in every way suited to be the father-in-law of a Spence. This creation she pa.s.sed on to Bainbridge as Desire's father. "Such a fine old gentleman," she would say. "And so devoted to his only daughter. Quite a recluse, though, my nephew tells me. And not at all strong." This idea of delicacy, which Miss Campion had added to the picture from a sense of the fitness of things, proved useful now. An only daughter may be summoned to attend a delicate father at a moment's notice, without unduly straining credulity.

One feels almost sorry for Bainbridge. It would have enjoyed the truth so much!

"Is Desire going to have no breakfast at all?" asked Aunt Caroline, from behind the coffee-urn on the morning following the garden-party.

It was an invariable custom of hers to pretend that her nephew was fully conversant with his wife's intentions.

"She may be tired," said Benis.

"No. She has been up some time. The door of her room was open when I came down."

"Then she is probably in the garden. I'll ask Olive to call her."

"Why not call her yourself? I have a feeling--"

The professor rose from his untasted coffee. When Aunt Caroline "had a feeling" it was useless to argue.

"Are you sleeping badly again, Benis?" asked Aunt Caroline. "Your eyes look like burnt holes in a blanket."

"Nothing to bother about, Aunt." He stepped out quickly into the sunny garden. But Desire was not among the flowers, neither was she on the lawn nor in the shrubbery. A few moments' search proved that she was not out of doors at all. Benis returned to his coffee. He found it quite cold and no waiting Aunt Caroline to pour him another cup. "I wonder," he pondered idly, "why, when one really wants coffee, it is always cold."

Then he forgot about coffee suddenly and completely, for Aunt Caroline came in with the news that Desire was gone.