CHAPTER VIII

IN WHICH HELEN DE VALLORBES LEARNS HER RIVAL'S NAME

"I hear Morabita sings, in _Ernani_, at the San Carlo on Friday night.

Do you care to go, Helen?"

The question, though asked casually, had, to the listener, the effect

of falling with a splash, as of a stone into a well, awakening

unexpected echoes, disturbing, rather harshly, the constrained silence

which had reigned during the earlier part of dinner.

All the long, hot afternoon, Madame de Vallorbes had been

alone--Richard invisible, shut persistently away in those rooms of the

_entresol_ into which, as yet, she had never succeeded in penetrating.

Richard had not proposed to her to do so. And it was part of that

praiseworthy discretion which she had agreed with herself to

practise--in her character of scrupulously unexacting guest--only to

accept invitations, never to issue them. How her cousin might occupy

himself, whom even he might receive, during the time spent in those

rooms, she did not know. And it was idle to inquire. Neither of her

servants, though skilful enough, as a rule, in the acquisition of

information, could, in this case, acquire any. And so it came about

that during those many still bright hours, following on her rather

agitated parting with Richard at midday, while she paced the noble

rooms of the first floor--once more taking note of their costly

furnishings and fine pictures, meeting her own restless image again and

again in their many mirrors--and later, near sundown, when she walked

the dry, brown pathways of the ilex and cypress grove, the wildest

suspicions of his possible doings assailed her. For she was constrained

to admit that, though she had spent a full week now under his roof, it

was but the veriest fringe, after all, of the young man's habits and

thought with which she was actually acquainted. And this not only

desperately intrigued her curiosity, but the apartness, behind which he

entrenched himself and his doings, was as a slight put upon her and

consequent source of sharp mortification. So to-day she ranged all

permitted spaces of the villa and its grounds softly, yet lithe,

watchful, fierce as a she-panther--her ears strained to hear, her eyes

to see, driven the while by jealousy of that nameless rival, to

remembrance of whom all the whole place was dedicated, and by baffled

passion, as with whips.

Nor did superstition fail to add its word of ill-omen at this juncture.

A carrion crow, long-legged, heavy of beak, alighting on the clustered

curls of the marble bust of Homer, startled her with vociferous

croakings. A long, narrow, many-jointed, blue-black, evil-looking

beetle crawled from among the rusty, fibrous, cypress roots across her

path. A funeral procession, priest and acolytes, with lighted tapers,

sitting within the glass-sided hearse at head and foot of the

flower-strewn coffin, wound slowly along the dusty, white

road--bordered by queer growth of prickly-pear and ragged, stunted

palm-trees--far below. She crossed herself, turning hurriedly away.

Yet, for an instant, Death, triumphant, hideous, inevitable, and all

the spiritual terror and physical disgust of it, grinned at her, its

fleshless face, as it seemed, close against her own. And alongside

Death--by some malign association of ideas and ugly antic of

profanity--she saw the _bel tete de Jesu_ of M. Paul Destournelle as

she had seen it this morning, he looking back, hat in hand, as he

plunged down the break-neck, Neapolitan side-street, with that impish,

bleating, goatlike laugh.

By the time the dinner-hour drew near she found her outlook in radical

need of reconstruction, and to that end bade Zelie dress her in the

crocus-yellow brocade, reserved for some emergency such as the present.

It was a gown, surely, to restore self-confidence and induce

self-respect! Fashioned fancifully, according to a picturesque,

seventeenth-century, Venetian model, the full sleeves and the

long-waisted bodice of it--this cut low, generously displaying her

shoulders and swell of her bosom--were draped with superb _guipure de

Flandres a brides frisees_ and strings of seed pearls. All trace of

ascetic simplicity had very certainly departed. Helen was

resplendent--strings of seed pearls twisted in her honey-coloured hair,

a clear red in her cheeks and hard brilliance in her eyes, bred of

eager jealous excitement. She had, indeed, reached a stage of feeling

in which the sight of Richard Calmady, the fact of his presence, worked

upon her to the extent of dangerous emotion. And now this statement of

his, and the question following it, caused the flame of the inward

fires tormenting her to leap high.

"Ah! Morabita!" she exclaimed. "What an age it is since I have heard

her sing, or thought about her! How is her voice lasting, Richard?"

"I really don't know," he answered, "and that is why I am rather

curious to hear her. There was literally nothing but a voice in her

case--no dramatic sense, nothing in the way of intelligence to fall

back on. On that account it interested me to watch her. She and her

voice had no essential relation to one another. Her talent was stuck

into her, as you might stick a pin into a cushion. She produced

glorious effects without a notion how she produced them, and gave

expression--and perfectly just expression--to emotions she had never

dreamed of. At the best of times singers are a feeble folk

intellectually, but, of all singers I have known, she was mentally the

very feeblest."

"No, perhaps she was not very wise," Helen put in, but quite mildly,

quite kindly.

"And so if the voice went, everything went. And that made one reflect

agreeably upon the remarkably haphazard methods employed by that which

we politely call Almighty God in His construction of our unhappy

selves. Design?--There's not a trace of design in the whole show.

Bodies, souls, gifts, superfluities, deficiencies, just pitched

together anyhow. The most bungling of human artists would blush to turn

out such work."

Richard spoke rapidly. He had refused course after course. And now the

food on his plate remained untasted. Seen in the soft light of the

shaded candles his face had a strange look of distraction upon it, as

though he too was restless with an intimate, deep-seated restlessness.

His skin was less colourless than usual, his manner less colourless

also. And this conferred a certain youthfulness on him, making him seem

nearer--so Helen thought--to the boy she had known at Brockhurst, than

to the man, whom lately, she had been so signally conscious that she

failed to know.

"No, I hope Morabita's voice remains to her," he continued. "Her

absolute nullity minus it is disagreeable to think of. And much as I

relish collecting telling examples of the fatuity of the Creator--she,

voiceless, would offer a supreme one--I would spare her that, poor

dear. For she was really rather charming to me at one time."

"So it was commonly reported," Helen remarked.

"Was it?" Richard said absently.

Though as a rule conspicuously abstemious, he had drunk rather freely

to-night, and that with an odd haste of thirst. Now he touched his

champagne tumbler, intimating to Bates, the house-steward--sometime the

Brockhurst under butler--that it should be refilled.

"I can't have seen Morabita for nearly three years," he went on. "And

my last recollections of her are unfortunate. She had sent me a box, in

Vienna it was I think, for the _Traviata_. She was fat then, or rather,

fatter. Stage furniture leaves something to desire in the way of

solidity. In the death scene the middle of the bed collapsed. Her

swan-song ceased abruptly. Her head and heels were in the air, and the

very largest rest of her upon the floor, bed and bedclothes standing

out in a frill all around. It was a sight discouraging to sentiment. I

judged it kinder not to go to supper with her after the performance

that night."

Richard paused, again drained his glass.

"I beg your pardon," he said, "what atrocious nonsense I am talking!"

"I think I rather enjoy it," Madame de Vallorbes answered. She looked

at the young man sideways, from under her delicate eyelids. He was

perfectly sober--of that there was no question. Yet he was less

inaccessible, somehow, than usual. She inclined to experiment.--"Only I

am sorry for Morabita in more ways than one, poor wretch. But then

perhaps I am just a little sorry for all those women whom you reject,

Richard."

"The women whom I reject?" he said harshly.

"Yes, whom you reject," Helen repeated.--Then she busied herself with a

small black fig, splitting it deftly open, disclosing the purple, and

rose, and clear living greens of the flesh and innumerable seeds of it,

colours rich as those of a tropic sky at sunset.--"And there are so

many of those women it seems to me! I am coming to have a quite

pathetic fellowship for them." She buried her white teeth in the

softness of the fig.--"Not without reason, perhaps. It is idle to deny

that you are a pastmaster in the ungentle art of rejection. What have

you to say in self-defense, Dickie?"

"That talking nonsense appears to be highly infectious--and that it is

a disagreeably oppressive evening."

Helen de Vallorbes smiled upon him, glanced quickly over her shoulder

to assure herself the servants were no longer present--then spoke,

leaning across the corner of the table towards him, while her eyes

searched his with a certain daring provocation.

"Yes, I admit I have finished my fig. Dinner is over. And it is my

place to disappear according to custom."--She laid her rosy finger-tips

together, her elbows resting on the table. "But I am disinclined to

disappear. I have a number of things to say. Take that question of

going to the opera, for instance. Half Naples will be there, and I know

more than half Naples, and more than half Naples knows me. I do not

crave to run incontinently into the arms of any of de Vallorbes' many

relations. They were not conspicuously kind to me when I was here as a

girl and stood very much in need of kindness. So the question of going

to the San Carlo, you see, requires reflection. And then,"--her tone

softened to a most persuasive gentleness,--"then, the evenings are a

trifle long when one is alone and has nothing very satisfactory to

think about. And I have been worried to-day, detestably worried."--She

looked down at her finger-tips. Her expression became almost sombre.

"In any case I shall not plague you very much longer, Richard," she

said rather grandly. "I have determined to remove myself bag and

baggage. It is best, more dignified to do so. Reluctantly I own that.

Here have I no abiding city. I wish I had, perhaps, but I haven't.

Therefore it is useless, and worse than useless, to play at having one.

One must just face the truth."

She looked full at the young man, smiling at him, as though somehow

forgiving him a slight, an unkindness, a neglect.

"And so, just because to you it all matters so uncommonly little, let

us talk rather longer this evening."

She rose.

"I'll go on into the long drawing-room," she said. "The windows were

still open there when I came in to dinner. The room will be pleasantly

cool. You will come?"

And she moved away quietly, thoughtfully, opened the high double-doors,

left them open, and that without once looking back. Yet her hearing was

strained to catch the smallest sound above that which accompanied her,

namely, the rustling of her dress. Then a queer shiver ran all down her

spine and she set her teeth, for she perceived that halting, shuffling

footsteps had begun to follow those light and graceful footsteps of her

own.

"_Ce n'est que le premier pas qui coute_," she said to herself. "I have

no fear for the rest."

Yet, crossing the near half of the great room, she sank down on a sofa,

thankful there was no farther to go. In the last few minutes she had

put forth more will-power, felt more deeply, than she had supposed. Her

knees gave under her. It was a relief to sit down.

The many candles in the cut-glass chandeliers, hanging from along the

centre of the painted ceiling, were lighted, filling the length and

breadth of the room with a bland, diffused radiance. It touched picture

and statue, tall mirror, rich curtain, polished woodwork of chair and

table, gleaming ebony and ivory cabinet. It touched Helen de Vallorbes'

bright head and the strings of pearls twisted in her hair, her white

neck, the swell of her bosom, and all that delicate wonder of

needlework--the Flanders' lace--trimming her bodice. It lay on her lap,

too, as she leaned back in the corner of the sofa, her hands pressed

down on either side her thighs--lay there bringing the pattern of her

brocaded dress into high relief. This was a design of pomegranates--leaves,

flowers, and fruit--and of trailing, peacock feathers, a couple of

shades lighter than the crocus-yellow ground. The light took the

over-threads and stayed in them.

The window stood wide open on to the balcony, the elaborately

wrought-ironwork of which--scroll and vase, plunging dolphin and

rampant sea-horse--detached itself from the opaque background of the

night. And in at the window came luscious scents from the garden below,

a chime of falling water, the music, faint and distant, in rising and

falling cadence of a marching military band. In at it also, and rising

superior to all these in imperativeness and purpose, came the voice of

Naples itself--no longer that of a city of toil and commerce, but that

of a city of pleasure, a city of licence, until such time as the dawn

should once again break, and the sun arise, driving back man and beast

alike to labour, the one from merry sinning, the other from hard-earned

sleep. And once again, but in clearer, more urgent, accents, the voice

of the city repeated its message to Helen de Vallorbes, calling aloud

to her to do even as it was doing, namely, to wed--to wed. And, hearing

it, understanding that message, for a little space shame took her, in

face both of its and her own shamelessness, so that she closed her

eyes, unable for the moment to look at Richard Calmady as he crossed

the great room in that bland and yet generous light. But, almost

immediately, his voice, cold and measured in tone, there close beside

her, claimed her attention.

"That which you said at dinner rather distresses me, Helen."

Then, shame or no shame, Madame de Vallorbes, of necessity, opened her

eyes. And, so doing, it needed all her self-control to repress a cry.

She forced her open hands down very hard on the mattress of the sofa.

For Richard leaned his back against the jamb of the open window, and

she saw his face and all his poor figure in profile. His left hand hung

straight at his side, the tips of his fingers only just not touching

the floor. And again, as at midday the spectacle of his deformity

worked upon her strangely.

"What of all that which I said at dinner distresses you?" she asked

gently, with sudden solicitude.

"You showed me that I have been a wretchedly negligent host."--In

speaking, the young man turned his head and looked at her, paused a

moment, almost startled by her resplendent aspect. Then he looked down

at his own stunted and defective limbs. His expression became very

grim. He raised his shoulders just perceptibly. "I reproach myself with

having allowed you to be so much alone. It must have been awfully dull

for you."

"It was a little dull," Helen said, still gently.

"I ought to have begged you to ask some of the people you know in

Naples to come here. It was stupid of me not to think of it. I need not

have seen them, neither need they have seen me."

He looked at her steadily again, as though trying to fix her image in

his memory.

"Yes, it was stupid of me," he repeated absently. "But I have got into

churlish, bachelor habits--that can hardly be helped, living alone, or

on board ship, as I do--and I have pretty well forgotten how to provide

adequately for the entertainment of a guest."

"Oh! I have had that which I wanted, that which I came for," Helen

answered, very charmingly,--"had it in part, at all events. Though I

could have put up with just a little more of it, Dickie, perhaps."

"I warned you, if you remember, that opportunities of amusement--as

that word is generally understood--would be limited."

"Amusement?" she exclaimed, with an almost tragic inflection of

contempt.

"Oh yes!" he said, "amusement is not to be despised. I'd give all I am

worth, half my time, to be amused--but that again, like hospitality, is

rather a lost art with me. You remember, I warned you life at the villa

in these days was not precisely hilarious."

Helen clapped her hands together.

"Ah! you are wilfully obtuse, you are wilfully, cruelly pigheaded!" she

cried. "Pardon me, dear Richard, but your attitude is enough to

exasperate a saint. And I am no saint as yet. I am still

human--radically, for my own peace of mind lamentably, human. I am only

too capable of being grieved, humiliated, hurt. But there, it is folly

to say such things to you! You are hopelessly insensible to all that.

So I take refuge in quoting your own words of this morning against

you--that no explanation is lucid if the hearer refuses to accept it."

"I am dull, no doubt, but honestly I fail to see how that remark of

mine can be held to apply in the present case."

"It applies quite desolatingly well!" Helen declared, with spirit. Then

her manner softened into a seductiveness of forgiveness once

again.--"And so, dear Richard, I am glad that I had already determined

to leave here to-morrow. It would have been a little too wretched to

arrive at that determination after this conversation. You must go alone

to hear your old flame, Morabita, sing. Only, if her voice is still as

sympathetic as of old, if it moves you from your present insensibility,

you may read remembrance of some aspects of my visit into the witchery

of it if you like. It may occur to you what those aspects really

meant."

Helen smiled upon him, leaning a little forward. Her eyes shone, as

though looking out through unshed tears.

"It's not exactly flattering to one's vanity to be compelled to depute

to another woman the making of such things clear. But it is too evident

I waste my time in attempting to make them clear myself. No explanation

is lucid, _et caetera_----"

Helen shook back her head with an extraordinary charm of half-defiant,

half-tearful laughter. She was playing a game, her whole intelligence

bent on the playing of it skilfully. Yet she was genuinely touched. She

was swayed by her very real emotion. She spoke from her heart, though

every word, every passing action, subserved her ultimate purpose in

regard to Richard Calmady.

"And, after all, one must retain some remnant of self-respect with

which to cover the nakedness of one's---- Oh yes! decidedly, Morabita's

voice had best do the rest."

Richard had moved from his station in the window. He stood at the far

end of the sofa, resting his hands on the gilded and carven arm of it.

Now the ungainliness of his deformity was hidden, and his height was

greater than that of his companion, obliging her to look up at him.

"I gave you my word, Helen," he said, "I have no notion what you are

driving at."

"Driving at, driving at?" she cried. "Why, the self-evident truth that

you are forcing me rather brutally to pay the full price of my weakness

in coming here, in permitting myself the indulgence of seeing you

again. You told me directly I arrived, with rather cynical frankness,

that I had not changed. That is quite true. What I was at Brockhurst,

four years ago, what I then felt, that I am and that I feel still. Oh!

you have nothing to reproach yourself with in defect of plain speaking,

or excess of amiable subterfuge! You hit out very straight from the

shoulder! Directly I arrived you also told me how you had devoted this

place--with which, after all, I am not wholly unconnected--to the cult,

to the ideal worship, of a woman whom you loved."

"So I have devoted it," Richard said.

"And yet I was weak enough to remain!"

The young man's face relaxed, but its expression remained enigmatic.

"And why not?" he asked.

"Because, in remaining, I have laid myself open to misconstruction, to

all manner of pains and penalties, not easy to be endured, to the

odious certainty of appearing contemptible in your estimation as well

as in my own."

Helen patted her pretty foot upon the floor in a small frenzy of

irritation.

"How can I hope to escape, since even the precious being whom you

affect to worship you keep sternly at arm's length, that is among the

other pleasing things you confided to me immediately on my

arrival--lest, seen at close quarters, she should fall below your

requirements and so you should suffer disillusion. Ah! you are

frightfully cold-blooded, repulsively inhuman. Whether you judge others

by yourself, reckoning them equally devoid of natural feeling, or

whether you find a vindictive relish in rejecting the friendship and

affection so lavishly offered you----"

"Is it offered lavishly? That comes as news to me," he put in.

"Ah! but it is. And I leave you to picture the pleasing entertainment

afforded the offerer in seeing you ignore the offering, or, worse

still, take it, examine it, and throw it aside like a dirty rag! In one

case you underline your rejection almost to the point of insult."

"This is very instructive. I am learning a whole lot about myself,"

Richard said coolly.

"But look," Madame de Vallorbes cried, "do you not prefer exposing

yourself to the probability of serious illness rather than remain under

the same roof with me? The inference hits one in the face. To you the

pestilential exhalations, the unspeakable abominations, of Naples

harbour appear less dangerous than my near neighbourhood."

"You put it more strongly than I should," he answered, smiling. "Yet,

from a certain standpoint, that may very well be true."

For an instant Helen hesitated. Her intelligence, for all its

alertness, was strained exactly to appraise the value of his words,

neither over, nor under, rating it. And her eyes searched his with a

certain boldness and imperiousness of gaze. Richard, meanwhile, folding

his arms upon the carven and gilt frame of the sofa, looked back at

her, smiling still, at once ironically and very sadly. Then swift

assurance came to her of the brazen card she had best play. But,

playing it, she was constrained to avert her eyes and set her glance

pensively upon the light-visited surface of her crocus-yellow, silken

lap.

"I will do my best possible to accept your nightly journeys as a

compliment in disguise, then," she said, quite softly. "For truly, when

I come to think of it, were she, herself, here--she, the woman you so

religiously admire that you take elaborate pains to avoid having

anything on earth to do with her--were she herself here you could

hardly take more extensive measures to secure yourself against risk of

disappointment, hardly exercise a greater rage of caution!"

"Perhaps that's just it. Perhaps you have arrived at it all at last.

Perhaps she is here," he said.

And he turned away, steadying himself with one hand against the jamb of

the window, and shuffled out slowly, laboriously, onto the balcony into

the night.

For a quite perceptible length of time Helen de Vallorbes continued to

contemplate the light-visited surface of her crocus-yellow, silken lap.

She followed the lines of the rich pattern--pomegranate, fruit and

blossom, trailing peacock's feather. For by such mechanical employment

alone could she keep the immensity of her excitement and of her triumph

in check. To shout aloud, to dance, to run wildly to and fro, would

have been only too possible to her just then. All that for which she

had schemed, had ruled herself discreetly, had ridden a waiting race,

had been hers, in fact, from the first--the prize adjudged before ever

she left the starting-post. She held this man in the hollow of her

hand, and that by no result of cunning artifice, but by right divine of

beauty and wit and the manifold seductions of her richly-endowed

personality. And, thinking of that, she clenched her dainty fists,

opened them again, and again clenched them, upon the yielding mattress

of the sofa, given over to an ecstasy of physical enjoyment, weaving

even as, with clawed and padded paws, her prototype the she-panther

might. Slowly she raised her downcast eyes and looked after Richard

Calmady, his figure a blackness, as of vacancy, against the elaborate

wrought-ironwork of the balcony. And so doing, an adorable sensation

moved her, at once of hungry tenderness and of fear--fear of something

unknown, in a way fundamental, incalculable, the like of which she had

never experienced before. Ah! indeed, of all her many loves, here was

the crown and climax! Yet, in the midst of her very vital rapture, she

could still find time for remembrance of the little, crescent-shaped

scar upon her temple, and for remembrance of Katherine Calmady, who

had, unwittingly, fixed that blemish upon her and had also more than

once frustrated her designs. This time frustration was not possible.

She was about to revenge the infliction of that little scar! And, at

the same time the intellectual part of her was agreeably intrigued,

trying to disentangle the why and wherefore of Richard's late action

and utterances. While self-love was gratified to the highest height of

its ambition by the knowledge that not only in his heart had she long

reigned, but that he had dedicated time and wealth and refined

ingenuity to the idea of her, to her worship, to the making of this,

her former dwelling-place, into a temple for her honour, a splendid

witness to her victorious charm, a shrine not unfitting to contain the

idol of his imagination.

For a little space she rested in all this, savouring the sweetness of

it as some odour of costly sacrifice. For whatever her sins and lapses,

Helen de Vallorbes had the fine aesthetic appreciations, as well as the

inevitable animality, of the great courtesan. The artist was at least

as present in her as the whore. And it was not, therefore, until

realisation of her present felicity was complete, until it had soaked

into her, so to speak, to the extent of a delicious familiarity, that

she was disposed to seek change of posture or of place. Then, at last,

softly, languidly, for indeed she was somewhat spent by the manifold

emotions of the day, she rose and followed Richard into the starless,

low-lying night. Her first words were very simple, yet to herself

charged with far-reaching meaning--as a little key may give access to a

treasure-chest containing riches of fabulous worth.

"Richard, is it really true, that which you have told me?"

"What conceivable object could I have in lying?"

"Then why have you delayed?--why wasted the precious days--the precious

months and years, if it comes to that?"

"How in honour and decency could I do otherwise--circumstances being

such as they are, I being that which I am?"

The two voices were in notable contrast. Both were low, both were

penetrated by feeling. But the man's was hoarse and rasping, the

woman's smooth and soft as milk.

"Ah! it is the old story!" she said. "Will you never comprehend,

Dickie, that what is to you hateful in yourself, may to some one else

be the last word of attraction, of seduction, even?"

"God forbid I should ever comprehend that!" he answered. "When I take

to glorying in my shame, pluming myself upon my abnormality, then,

indeed, I become beyond all example loathsome. The most deplorable

moment of my very inglorious career will be precisely that in which I

cease to look at myself with dispassionate contempt."

Helen knelt down, resting her beautiful arms upon the dark hand-rail of

the balcony, letting her wrists droop over it into the outer dimness.

The bland light from the open window dwelt on her kneeling figure and

bowed head. But it was as well, perhaps, that the night dropped a veil

upon her face.

"And yet so it is," she said. "You may repudiate the idea, but the fact

remains. I do not say it would affect all women alike--affect those,

for instance, whose conception of love, and of the relation between man

and woman, is dependent upon the slightly improper and very tedious

marriage service as authorised by the English Church. Let the

conventional be conventional still! So much the better if you don't

appeal to them--meagre, timid, inadequate, respectable--a generation of

fashion-plates with a sixpenny book of etiquette, moral and social,

stuck inside them to serve for a soul."

Helen's voice broke in a little spasm of laughter, and her hands began,

unconsciously, to open and close, open and close, weaving in soft,

outer darkness.

"We may leave them out of the argument.--But there remain the elect,

Richard, among whom I dare count myself. And over them, never doubt it,

just that which you hate and which appears at first sight to separate

you so cruelly from other men, gives you a strange empire. You

stimulate, you arrest, you satisfy one's imagination, as does the

spectacle of some great drama. You are at once enslaved and emancipated

by this thing--to you hateful, to me adorable--beyond all measure of

bondage or freedom inflicted upon, or enjoyed by, other men. And in

this, just this, lies magnificent compensation if you would but see it.

I have always known that--known that if you would put aside your

arrogance and pride, and yield yourself a little, it was possible to

love you, and give you such joy in loving as one could give to no-one

else on earth."

Her voice sweetened yet more. She leaned forward, pressing her bosom

against the rough ironwork of the balcony.

"I knew that, from the first hour we met, in the variegated, autumn

sunshine, upon the greensward, before the white summer-house

overlooking that noble, English, woodland view. I saw you, and so doing

I saw mysteries of joy in myself unimagined by me before. It went very

hard with me then, Richard. It has gone very hard with me ever since."

Madame de Vallorbes' words died away in a grave and delicate whisper.

But she did not turn her head, nor did Richard speak. Only, close there

beside her, she heard him breathe, panting short and quick even as a

dog pants, while a certain vibration seemed to run along the rough

ironwork against which she leaned. And by these signs Helen judged her

speech, though unanswered, had not been wholly in vain. From below, the

luscious fragrance of the garden, the chime of falling water, and the

urgent voice of the painted pleasure-city came up about her. Night had

veiled the face of Naples, even as Helen's own. Yet lines of

innumerable lights described the suave curve of the bay, climbed the

heights of Posilipo, were doubled in the oily waters of the harbour,

spread abroad alluring gaiety in the wide piazzas, and shone like

watchful and soliciting eyes from out the darkness of narrow street,

steep lane, and cutthroat alley. While, above all that, high uplifted

against the opacity of the starless sky, a blood-red beacon burned on

the summit of Vesuvius, the sombre glow of it reflected upon the

underside of the masses of downward-rolling smoke as upon the belly of

some slow-crawling, monstrous serpent.

Suddenly Helen spoke once again, and with apparent inconsequence.

"Richard, you must have known she could never satisfy you--why did you

try to marry Constance Quayle?"

"To escape."

"From whom--from me?"

"From myself, which is much the same thing as saying from you, I

suppose."

"And you could not escape?"

"So it seems."

"But--but, dear Richard," she said plaintively, yet with very winning

sweetness, "why, after all, should you want so desperately to escape?"

Richard moved a little farther from her.

"I have already explained that to you, to the point of insult, so you

tell me," he said. "Surely it is unnecessary to go over the ground

again?"

"You carry your idealism to the verge of slight absurdity," she

answered. "Oh! you of altogether too little faith, how should you gauge

the full flavour of the fruit till you have set your teeth in it?

Better, far better, be a sacramentalist like me and embrace the idea

through the act, than refuse the act in dread of imperiling the

dominion of the idea. You put the cart before the horse with a

vengeance, Dickie! There's such a thing as being so reverently-minded

towards your god that he ceases to be the very least profit or use to

you."

And again she heard that panting breath beside her. Again laughter

bubbled up in her fair throat, and her hands fell to weaving the soft,

outer darkness.

"You must perceive that it cannot end here and thus," she said

presently.

"Of course not," he answered. Then, after a moment's pause, he added

coldly enough:--"I foresaw that, so I gave orders yesterday that the

yacht was not to be laid up, but only to coal and provision, and

undergo some imperatively necessary repairs. She should be ready for

sea by the end of the week."

Helen turned sideways, and the bland light, from the room within,

touched her face now as well as her kneeling figure.

"And then, and then?" she demanded, almost violently.

"Then I shall go," Richard replied. "Where, I do not yet know, but as

far, anyhow, as the coal in the yacht's bunkers will drive her.

Distance is more important than locality just now. And I leave you here

at the villa, Helen. Do not regret that you came. I don't."

He too had turned to the light, which revealed his face ravaged and

aged by stress of emotion, revealed too the homelessness, as of empty

space, resident in his eyes.

"I shall be glad to remember the place pleases and speaks to you. It

has been rather a haven of rest to me during these last two years. You

would have had it at my death, in any case. You have it a little

sooner--that's all."

But Helen held out her arms.

"The villa, the villa," she cried, "what do I want with that! God in

heaven, are you utterly devoid of all sensibility, all heart? Or are

you afraid--afraid even yet, oh, very chicken-livered lover--that

behind the beauty of Naples you may find the filth? It is not so,

Dickie. It is not so, I tell you.--Look at me. What would you have

more? Surely, for any man, my love is good enough!"

And then hurriedly, with a rustling of silken skirts, hot with anger

from head to heel, she sprang to her feet.

Across the room one of the men-servants advanced.

"The carriage is at the door, sir," he said.

And Madame de Vallorbes' voice broke in with a singular lightness and

nonchalance:--

"Surely it is rather imprudent to go out again to-night? You told me,

at dinner, you were not well, that you had had a touch of fever."

She held out her hand, smiling serenely.

"Be advised," she said--"avoid malaria. I shall see you before I go

to-morrow? Yes--an afternoon train, I think. Good-night, we meet at

breakfast as usual."

She stepped in at the window, gathered up certain small properties--a

gold scent-bottle, one or two books, a blotting-case, as with a view to

final packing and departure. Just as she reached the door she heard

Richard say curtly:--

"Send the carriage round. I shall not want it to-night."

But even so Helen did not turn back. On the contrary, she ran, light of

foot as the little dancer, of long ago, with blush-roses in her hat,

through all the suite of rooms to her own sea-blue, sea-green

bedchamber, and there, sitting down before the toilet-table, greeted

her own radiant image in the glass. Her lips were very red. Her eyes

shone like pale stars on a windy night.

"Quick, quick, undress me, Zelie! Put me to bed. I am simply expiring

of fatigue," she said.