"Oh!--I'm here, for one thing."

He looked at her victoriously.

"You'll have a letter from him to-morrow. Poor old chap!"

He spoke contemptuously.

For the first time Lord Holme seemed consciously and unfavourably observant of his wife and Leo. His under-jaw began to move. But Miss Schley came on to the stage again, and he thrust his head eagerly forward.

During the rest of the evening Miss Schley did not relax her ingenious efforts of mimicry, but she took care not to make them too prominent.

She had struck her most resonant note in the first act, and during the two remaining acts she merely kept her impersonation to its original lines. Lady Holme watched the whole performance imperturbably, but before the final curtain fell she knew that she was not going to throw cold water on that flame which was burning within her. Fritz's behaviour, perhaps, decided which of the two actions should be carried out--the douching or the fanning. Possibly Leo Ulford had something to say in the matter too. Or did the faces of friends below in the stalls play their part in the silent drama which moved step by step with the spoken drama on the stage? Lady Holme did not ask questions of herself.

When Mr. Laycock and Fritz were furiously performing the duties of a claque at the end of the play, she got up smiling, and nodded to Mrs.

Wolfstein in token of her pleasure in Miss Schley's success, her opinion that it had been worthily earned. As she nodded she touched one hand with the other, making a silent applause that Mrs. Wolfstein and all her friends might see. Then she let Leo Ulford put on her cloak and called pretty words down Mrs. Leo's trumpet, all the while nearly deafened by Fritz's demonstrations, which even outran Mr. Laycock's.

When at last they died away she said to Leo:

"We are going on to the Elwyns. Shall you be there?"

He stood over her, while Mrs. Ulford watched him, drooping her head sideways.

"Yes."

"We can talk it all over quietly. Fritz!"

"What's that about the Elwyns?" said Lord Holme.

"I was telling Mr. Ulford that we are going on there."

"I'm not. Never heard of it."

Lady Holme was on the point of retorting that it was he who had told her to accept the invitation on the ground that "the Elwyns always do you better than anyone in London, whether they're second-raters or not," but a look in Leo Ulford's eyes checked her.

"Very well," she said. "Go to the club if you like; but I must peep in for five minutes. Mrs. Ulford, didn't you think Miss Schley rather delicious--?"

She went out of the box with one hand on a pink arm, talking gently into the trumpet.

"You goin' to the Elwyns?" said Lord Holme, gruffly, to Leo Ulford as they got their coats and prepared to follow.

"Depends on my wife. If she's done up--"

"Ah!" said Lord Holme, striking a match, and holding out his cigarette case, regardless of regulations.

A momentary desire to look in at the Elwyns' possessed him. Then he thought of a supper-party and forgot it.

CHAPTER XI

MRS. WOLFSTEIN was right. There was money in Miss Schley's performance.

Her sly impropriety appealed with extraordinary force to the peculiar respectability characteristic of the British temperament, and her celebrity, hitherto mainly social, was suddenly and enormously increased. Already a popular person, she became a popular actress, and was soon as well-known to the world in the streets and the suburbs as to the world in the drawing-rooms of Mayfair. And this public celebrity greatly increased the value that was put upon her in private--especially the value put upon her by men.

The average man adores being connected openly with the woman who is the rage of the moment. It flatters his vanity and makes him feel good all over. It even frequently turns his head and makes him almost as intoxicated as a young girl with adulation received at her first ball.

The combination of Miss Schley herself and Miss Schley's celebrity--or notoriety--had undoubtedly turned Lord Holme's head. Perhaps he had not the desire to conceal the fact. Certainly he had not the finesse. He presented his turned head to the world with an audacious simplicity that was almost laughable, and that had in it an element of boyishness not wholly unattractive to those who looked on--the casual ones to whom even the tragedies of a highly-civilised society bring but a quiet and cynical amusement.

Lady Holme was not one of these. Her strong temper was token of a vivid temperament. Till now this vivid temperament had been rocked in the cradle of an easy, a contented, a very successful life. Such storms as had come to her had quickly passed away. The sun had never been far off.

Her egoism had been constantly flattered. Her will had been perpetually paramount. Even the tyranny of Lord Holme had been but as the tyranny of a selfish, thoughtless, pleasure-seeking boy who, after all, was faithful to her and was fond of her. His temperamental indifference to any feelings but his own had been often concealed and overlaid by his strong physical passion for his wife's beauty, his profound satisfaction in having carried off and in possessing a woman admired and sought by many others.

Suddenly life presented to Lady Holme its seamy side; Fate attacking her in her woman's vanity, her egoism, even in her love. The vision startled. The blow stung. She was conscious of confusion, of cloud, then of a terrible orderliness, of a clear light. In the confusion she seemed to hear voices never heard before, voices that dared to jeer at her; in the cloud to see phantoms of gigantic size menacing her, impending over her. The orderliness, the clear light were more frightful to her. They left less to her imagination; had, as it were, no ragged edges. In them she faced a definite catastrophe, saw it whole, as one sees a near object in the magical atmosphere of the East, outlined with burning blue, quivering with relentless gold. She saw herself in the dust, pelted, mocked at.

That seemed at first to be incredible. But she saw it so plainly that she could not even pretend to herself that she was deceived by some unusual play of light or combination of shadows. What she saw--was:

Her husband had thrown off his allegiance to her and transferred his admiration, perhaps his affection, to the woman who had most deftly and delicately insulted her in the face of all her world. And he had done this with the most abominable publicity. That was what she saw in a clear light like the light of the East. That was what sent a lash across her temperament, scarring it perhaps, but waking it into all it could ever have of life. In each woman there is hidden a second woman, more fierce and tender, more evil and good, more strong and fervent than the woman who hides her in the ordinary hours of life; a woman who weeps blood where the other woman weeps tears, who strikes with a flaming sword where the other woman strikes with a willow wand.

This woman now rose up in Lady Holme, rose up to do battle.

The laughing, frivolous world was all unconscious of her. Lord Holme was unconscious of her. But she was at last fully conscious of herself.

This woman remembered Robin Pierce's odd belief and the light words with which she had chastised it. He had persistently kept faith in, and sought for, a far-away being. But she was a being of light and glory.

His kernel of the husk was still a siren, but a siren with a heart, with an exquisite imagination, with a fragrance of dreams about her, a lilt of eternal music in her voice, the beaming, wonder of things unearthly in her eyes. Poor Robin! Lady Holme found it in her heart to pity him as she realised herself. But then she turned her pity aside and concentrated it elsewhere. The egoism of her was not dead though the hidden woman had sprung up in vivid life. Her intellect was spurred into energy by the suffering of her pride and of her heart. Memory was restless and full of the passion of recall.

She remembered the night when she softly drew up the hood of her dressing-gown above her head and, rocking herself to and fro, murmured the "Allah-Akbar" of a philosophic fatalist--"I will live for the day. I will live for the night." What an absurd patter that was on the lips of a woman. And she remembered the conversation with Fritz that had preceded her monologue. She had asked him then whether he could love her if her beauty were taken from her. It had never occurred to her that while her beauty still remained her spell upon him might be weakened, might be broken. That it was broken now she did not say to herself.

All she did say to herself was that she must strike an effective blow against this impertinent woman. She had some pride but not enough to keep her passive. She was not one of those women who would rather lose all they have than struggle to keep it. She meant to struggle, but she had no wish that the world should know what she was doing. Pride rose in her when she thought of cold eyes watching the battle, cold voices commenting on it--Amalia Wolfstein's eyes, Mr. Bry's voice, a hundred other eyes and voices. Her quickened intellect, her woman's heart would teach her to be subtle. The danger lay in her temper. But since the scene at Arkell House she had thoroughly realised its impetuosity and watched it warily as one watches an enemy. She did not intend to be ruined by anything within her. The outside chances of life were many enough and deadly enough to deal with. Strength and daring were needed to ward them off. The chances that had their origin within the soul, the character--not really chances at all--must be controlled, foreseen, forestalled.

And yet she had not douched the flame of defiance which she had felt burning within her on the night of Pimpernel Schley's first appearance on the London stage. She had fanned it. At the Elwyns' ball she had fanned it. Temper had led her that night. Deliberately, and knowing perfectly well who was her guide, she had let it lead her. She had been like a human being who says, "To do this will be a sin. Very well, I choose to sin. But I will sin carefully." At the Elwyns she had discovered why her husband had not come with her. She had stayed late to please Leo Ulford. Mr. Laycock had come in about two in the morning and had described to Leo the festivity devised by Lord Holme in honour of Miss Schley, at which he had just been present. And Leo Ulford had repeated the description to her. She had deceived him into thinking that she had known of the supper-party and approved of it. But, after this deception, she had given a looser rein to her temper. She had let herself go, careless whether she set the poor pink eyelids of Mrs. Leo fluttering or not.

The hint of Fritz which she recognised in Leo Ulford had vaguely attracted her to him from the first. How her world would have laughed at such a domestic sentiment! She found herself wondering whether it were Miss Schley's physical resemblance to her which had first attracted Fritz, the touch of his wife in a woman who was not his wife and who was what men call "a rascal." Perhaps Fritz loved Miss Schley's imitation of her. She thought a great deal about that--turning it over and over in her mind, bringing to bear on it the white light of her knowledge of her husband's character. Did he see in the American his wife transformed, made common, sly, perhaps wicked, set on the outside edge of decent life, or further--over the border? And did he delight in that? If so, ought she not to--? Then her mind was busy. Should she change? If herself changed were his ideal, why not give him what he wanted? Why let another woman give it to him? But at this point she recognised a fact recognised by thousands of women with exasperation, sometimes with despair--that men would often hate in their wives the thing that draws them to women not their wives. The Pimpernel Schleys of the world know this masculine propensity of seeking different things--opposites, even--in the wife and the woman beyond the edge of the hearthstone, a propensity perhaps more tragic to wives than any other that exists in husbands. And having recognised this fact, Lady Holme knew that it would be worse than useless for her to imitate Miss Schley's imitation of her.

Then, travelling along the road of thought swiftly as women in such a case always travel, she reached another point. She began to consider the advice of Robin Pierce, given before she had begun to feel with such intensity, to consider it as a soldier might consider a plan of campaign drawn up by another.

Should she, instead of descending, of following the demure steps of the American to the lower places, strive to ascend?

Could she ascend? Was Robin Pierce right? She thought for a long time about his conception of her. The singing woman; would she be the most powerful enemy that could confront Miss Schley? And, if she would be, could the singing woman be made continuous in the speech and the actions of the life without music? She remembered a man she had known who stammered when he spoke, but never stammered when he sang. And she thought she resembled this man. Robin Pierce had always believed that she could speak without the stammer even as she sang without it. She had never cared to. She had trusted absolutely in her beauty. Now her trust was shaken. She thought of the crutch.

Realising herself she had said within herself, "Poor Robin!" seeing perhaps the tigress where he saw the angel. Now she asked herself whether the angel could conquer where the tigress might fail. People had come round her like beggars who have heard the chink of gold and she had showed them an empty purse. Could she show them something else? And if she could, would her husband join the beggars? Would he care to have even one piece of gold?

Whether Lord Holme's obvious infatuation had carried him very far she did not know. She did not stop to ask. A woman capable, as she was, of retrospective jealousy, an egoist accustomed to rule, buffeted in heart and pride, is swift not sluggish. And then how can one know these things? Jealousy rushes because it is ignorant.

Lord Holme and she were apparently on good terms. She was subtle, he was careless. As she did not interfere with him his humour was excellent.

She had carried self-control so far as never to allude to the fact that she knew about the supper-party. Yet it had actually got into the papers. Paragraphs had been written about a wonderful ornament of ice, representing the American eagle perched on the wrist of a glittering maiden, which had stood in the middle of the table. Of course she had seen them, and of course Lord Holme thought she had not seen them as she had never spoken of them. He went his way rejoicing, and there seemed to be sunshine in the Cadogan Square house. And meanwhile the world was smiling at the apparent triumph of impertinence, and wondering how long it would last, how far it would go. The few who were angry--Sir Donald was one of them--were in a mean minority.

Robin Pierce was angry too, but not with so much single-heartedness as was Sir Donald. It could not quite displease him if the Holmes drifted apart. Yet he was fond enough of Lady Holme, and he was subtle enough, to be sorry for any sorrow of hers, and to understand it--at any rate, partially--without much explanation. Perhaps he would have been more sorry if Leo Ulford had not come into Lady Holme's life, and if the defiance within her had not driven her into an intimacy that distressed Mrs. Leo and puzzled Sir Donald.

Robin's time in London was very nearly at an end. The season was at its height. Every day was crowded with engagements. It was almost impossible to find a quiet moment even to give to a loved one. But Robin was determined to have at least one hour with Lady Holme before he started for Italy. He told her so, and begged her to arrange it. She put him off again and again, then at last made an engagement, then broke it. In her present condition of mind to break faith with a man was a pleasure with a bitter savour. But Robin was not to be permanently avoided. He had obstinacy. He meant to have his hour, and perhaps Lady Holme always secretly meant that he should have it. At any rate she made another appointment and kept it.

She came one afternoon to his house in Half Moon Street. She had never been there before. She had never meant to go there. To do so was an imprudence. That fact was another of the pleasures with a bitter savour.

Robin met her at the head of the stairs, with an air of still excitement not common in his look and bearing. He followed her into the blue room where Sir Donald had talked with Carey. The "_Danseuse de Tunisie_"

still presided over it, holding her little marble fan. The open fireplace was filled with roses. The tea-table was already set by the great square couch. Robin shut the door and took out a matchbox.