"The older I grow," Forbes interposed, "the less I feel that people deserve either blame or praise for being what they are or doing what they do."

"Don't waste your pity on her; she had none for you."

"It's not pity--it's--"

Tait clapped his hand to his left side and choked back a cry of distress. Forbes turned to him with an exclamation of alarm. "You ought to see your doctor."

Tait shook his head: "No, he'd only swear at me for disobeying him. I'm all right--if I can only avoid any excitement. Been going a little too hard. It's that d.a.m.ned dilated heart of mine. The doctor said I ought to be in bed to-night."

"Why did you come here then?"

"Oh, young Webb was afraid that Alice's mother would drag her home if she knew I was not about. But I'm a fool. This life is killing me. I ought to run down to Vichy or Evian for a few days."

"Yes; you mustn't delay any further."

"I'll go if you'll come with me, Harvey. For one thing, it will get you away from that woman."

"Oh, there's no danger from her," said Forbes. "She's married now."

Tait shrugged his shoulders: "That's when a woman is most dangerous.

Young girls tied to their mother's ap.r.o.n-strings are risky enough, the Lord knows, but when a woman unhappily married meets an old lover who is still unmarried--humph, the weather doesn't last long as a topic of conversation. You come along with me."

Forbes felt doubly humiliated by his position. "I don't like the idea of running away from a woman."

"You're good enough soldier to know that there are times when it is cowardly not to run away. Do we go to Evian-les-Bains?"

"Yes. To-morrow, if you wish."

"Good! And I want you to promise not to see that woman at all to-night.

There are a lot of sharp eyes about, and the gossips can work up a big trade on a very small capital. Will you promise?"

"You are needlessly worried."

"Harvey, I never believed in playing with fire. I haven't asked you many favors. Will you grant me this one?"

Forbes was almost filial in his obedience: "Why, of course I promise not to meet her if I can avoid it."

"Good!" Tait rose to his feet with some difficulty. He was weak and shaken with premonitions. When a man's heart races and misses fire he is filled with dismay. He paused to lay his hands on Forbes' shoulders and plead as if for forgiveness for his solicitude. "Harvey, you may think I'm an old fool, but if you didn't run away from this danger, in after years you might have been sorry that you didn't."

"I understand," said Forbes. "G.o.d bless you, I appreciate it. I shall always be grateful for all you've done for me."

"I've done nothing but make a crutch of you, used you to fill the place of my own boy. If only you could--but we won't talk of her. But if anything happens to me--"

"Nothing is going to happen to you."

"I know that, but if anything should, I--I want you to promise to take care of Mildred. She'll have money enough--and so will you. I've fixed that--but--she'll need somebody to--well, we'll talk it over at Evian.

Let's go, home."

He moved on, leaning heavily on Forbes, but Winifred, seeing him about to escape, pounced on him and led him away in search of an imaginary diplomat.

Forbes, left alone, sank again on the marble bench, a prey to his thoughts. He felt that if he waited in this semi-obscurity he would not be discovered by Persis.

But she was hunting for him. She had eluded Willie, and appeared in the garden just as the Amba.s.sador was being haled away. She paused to wait for Forbes to be alone, and at that moment her husband regained her side; she heard his voice.

CHAPTER LV

"I say, Persis, I lost track of you in that ghastly mob. I'm sorry. By the way, wasn't that tall fella in the uniform the same Lieutenant What's-his-name that was honeying around Mrs. Neff?"

Persis was in too fierce a mood to continue that nonsense. She turned on Willie as a she-wolf turns on a terrier at her heels:

"Oh, Lord! Can't I escape you for a moment? Do go somewhere and smoke something. Or if the worst comes to the worst, drink something; but don't stand there making green eyes at me like an ape."

"Green eyes like an ape!" he echoed, stupidly. "Well, I'll be--" Then an unusual vigor of wrath stirred him. "Look here, Persis, I won't have you make fun of me. Everybody else laughs at me, even for winning you. They think you've made a fool of me, and they think you couldn't have married me except for my money. I don't suppose it could be love--n.o.body ever did love me. But whatever it was that made you marry me, you did marry me, and, by gad, you've got to remember it."

"There's no danger of my forgetting that," Persis snapped, frantic lest Forbes escape her. "Don't be odious! Don't make me hate you."

Willie grew the more fierce. "Well, I'd rather have you hate me than make a fool of me. I won't be laughed at--I won't."

Persis groaned with repugnance: "Oh, you've ceased to be a laughing matter to me, Willie."

Willie was about to reply in kind, but he gave her a long look and, seeing how beautiful she was, grew more tender. "Everything seems to have ceased to be a laughing matter to you, Persis. What has come over you? Before we were married you were always laughing--at everything, everybody. I used to love to watch you. Even when you guyed me I didn't much mind--because there was fun in it. I used to say I'd give everything I possessed just to have you about, and see the world through your eyes. But from the time we were married you quit laughing. Hang it all, I married you to cheer me up a bit. What in Heaven's name has changed you?"

Before this weakness she relented a little. "Oh, nothing has changed me.

Don't worry about me. I'm just a trifle bored with life."

"I've bought you everything you asked for, haven't I?" he asked. "Gad, your dressmaker's bills were enough. But the minute a gown came home you sickened of it. You tired of the theater, of the opera, of dancing. When I took you to the Royal Ascot you yawned as the horses came down the stretch. I bought you three new automobiles, and when we came down from Dieppe to Paris at a million miles an hour the pace scared me cold, but you--you went to sleep."

"It was soothing," she smiled.

"Soothing? Gad! do you want a bally flying-machine?"

"If it could take me to another planet."

Never dreaming how eager she was to be rid of him, he tried to please her in every manner save the one sure method of going away. He grew desperate: "Isn't there anything you want that money can buy?"

"I don't want anything that money can buy," was her dreary confession.

Somehow he seemed at last to understand.

"I suppose you're just tired of me," he sighed--"everlasting me. I must be a nuisance to you. Lord knows I am to myself!"

She looked at him with suddenly gentler eyes. In contemning himself he was commending himself. The best approach to a human tribunal, as to a divine, is a humble and a contrite heart. She put out her hand to him, but he did not see it; he set off to find some one to lead him to a Scotch highball. And Persis, now that she was rid of him, was free to glide forward to the marble bench, where she could see Forbes half concealed in a grotto of shadow and a mood of gloom.

The thought of what she was about to do gave her pause. She realized the atrocity of attempting to keep Forbes in mind when she had taken such solemn vows so publicly. She must be kinder to Willie. She tried to dismiss her conscience by telling herself that it would be childish to run away from Forbes. She caught sight of Mrs. Neff hovering about with the recaptured Alice. She dreaded what interpretation Mrs. Neff would put upon her appearance in the environs of Forbes. She remembered with what fierce criticism she had always met the slightest indiscretions of other married women.

A wife's progress must be along a tight wire, and she must walk it exactly. The least step aside attracts attention and invites disaster like the inaccuracy of a Blondel crossing Niagara and carrying a man on his shoulders.