And presently she was able to return in spirit to the first night of her marriage, when for a little interval of time she had lost Joan the individual, and become simply the woman, whose mission is to give....

She had thought so much of her husband that she was quite prepared to find him waiting at the dock for her, yellow boots, Derby hat, and all.

But he was not there, nor yet at the station in Louisville, though she had wired him from New York the date and hour of her coming.

Only two of the Misses Darcy were there to meet her, in Effie May's limousine, their manner nicely adjusted between melancholy, importance, and the _empress.e.m.e.nt_ due a distinguished relative returning from foreign parts.

"Yes, my dear, she is low, very low! Restoratives have to be administered constantly," sighed Miss Virginia. "What a charming hat!

Paris, I suppose? I always have maintained that the French touch--So that is why Sister Iphigenia is not here to meet you. We three take turns at watching with her. Your husband comes every night, and Ellen Neal makes herself useful, though why she should, with two nurses--No expense spared, of course. So pleasant to be able to die in such luxury, isn't it? She has been watching for you every day--seemed to be quite certain you were coming, even before she had your cablegram."

Joan interrupted this lugubrious chatter to ask the immediate whereabouts of Archie. The sisters exchanged uneasy glances.

"Cousin Effie May happened to mention that he was out riding this afternoon. Doubtless he had made some engagement before your letter came, or I am sure--" Miss Euphemia nudged her visibly into silence.

"I see," said Joan, flushing a trifle....

If Effie May was as "low" as reported, she showed little sign of it. She welcomed Joan in her usual loud and cheery tones, magnificent in a new lavender tea-gown, as pink-cheeked and carefully coiffed as ever. At her elbow was a box of chocolates.

"I knew that letter'd fetch you!" she chuckled. "Sort o' pitiful, wasn't it? People were mighty surprised to hear you were coming back. But not me. You're not so hard-sh.e.l.led as you try to be, girlie!"

Like the Misses Darcy, she displayed immediate interest in the Paris hat.

"Chick as it can be," she p.r.o.nounced approvingly. "I certainly am glad you're not high-brow enough yet to neglect your looks. No woman on earth is smart enough to be able to wear a hat that don't become her."

"There's a love of a hat in my trunk for you," laughed Joan, a weight lifting from her heart. (She decided that her hasty and dangerous journey had been a wild-goose chase so far as her step-mother was concerned. This was not her idea of a death-bed interview.) "A black crepe poke with a white lining, Effie May. Paris still does her mourning 'chickly'--poor Paris!"

The invalid's eye gleamed. "I might be trying it on when the doctor comes.... Oh, yes, dearie, he's taking notice!" Her several chins quivered with mirth. "But nothing doing. My heart's in the grave with Major--And Calloway," she added, dreamily. "I been thinking about the two of 'em so much lately that I declare I get 'em sort of mixed in my mind!"

She made Joan sit down beside her and tell her at once all about Paris, and how many n.o.blewomen she had met, and what they wore, and whether it was true that Frenchmen took more notice of married women, even of middleaged ones than of girls.

"Paris is the burg for me!" she sighed.

But in the midst of Joan's liveliest recital, her head dropped suddenly forward and she fell asleep. It was the other's first intimation that she had not come after all upon a wild goose chase.

She sat for a moment looking at this woman who had tried to be a mother to her, with her absurd golden head and beringed, puffy hands. Then, following an impulse rare with her, she stooped and kissed the painted cheek very tenderly. It was a pity that Effie May did not know.

She slipped away to the telephone and called up the Carmichael house.

The maid told her that Miss Emily was at home.

("So _she's_ not out riding with him!" thought Joan.)

Emily appeared politely surprised by her friend's arrival.

"Yes, Archie tells me how ill your step-mother is. I am so sorry! You say you will be here some time before you go back? I shall hope to see you, then."

"I hope you may," replied Joan even more politely, "but unfortunately I shall be very busy.... Look here, Emily Carmichael, what's the matter with you anyway? Come right over here and explain."

Emily came.

When the two had had their talk out and parted, tear-stained but reconciled, Joan went once more to the telephone and called up her husband.

His familiar voice over the wire gave her an unexpected thrill. She had forgotten how big and warm it was, even when he sang out of tune.

"Archie," she asked directly, "why weren't you at the station to meet me?"

He stammered out some rather breathless excuse.

"Yes, I know all about that--Emily told me that she often gets you to exercise Pegasus for her when she hasn't time. But why to-day particularly, when you knew I was coming?"

His voice was under better control now. "Why, you see, I didn't think it would look well for us to be seen together just now--"

"Wouldn't look well!"

"Why, no, Joan. You've got a pretty good case of abandonment--I left the house first, you know--but if we were to be seen together the minute you get home, sort of friendly-like, it might get to the ears of the Judge and prejudice him. When the whole thing's settled, of course, then--"

Joan gasped.

"What do you mean," she interrupted, "by a case of abandonment?"

"You wouldn't care to bring suit on any other grounds, would you!" he asked anxiously. "The fact is I'm afraid you couldn't, Joan. There _aren't_ any other grounds."

"Oh," she said blankly. "I understand.... Well, my dear, I'm sorry you feel that you can't come and say at least h.e.l.lo to me--'sort of friendly-like.'"

"So am I," he answered, gently....

Joan wandered back to her step-mother's room, feeling queer and dazed.

She had never before realized that anything other than death might be irremediable.

During all her months in Paris she had not even contemplated the possibility of divorcing Archie. She was blindly content with things as they stood, and it had not occurred to her that Archie might be otherwise, that he had seriously meant, for his own sake, perhaps, the suggestion he had once made to her. She was so used to doing his thinking for him.

Divorce!--that refuge of the foolish, the frail, those so lacking in pride as to be willing to confide their failures to the world!

"It is so--so unnecessary," she protested aloud, wondering vaguely why the phrase was familiar to her. Then with a start she recognized it as one of Eduard Desmond's.

The hot blood rushed into her face. Did they--Emily, Effie May, even Archie himself--believe her capable of the sort of thing Eduard Desmond meant? Dropping one husband to take on another--or perhaps taking on another without dropping the first? Was this the interpretation that had been put upon her life abroad, her precious companionship with Nikolai?--She shivered. No wonder Archie had not cared to come to see her!

For once the thought of Nikolai was of no comfort to her. She put it from her almost with horror. It seemed to her that their relationship was irreparably smirched, degraded, by the touch of profane hands....

She hoped that Effie May had awakened from her doze, so great was her need just then of the shrewd, tolerant, entirely human counsel of her step-mother.

But Effie May had not awakened; nor did she wake again.

CHAPTER LVII