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--nobody 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.

Persis hesitated, breathing hard with enormous excitement over so small

a matter. While she hesitated an Italian duke who had been a little too

gracious in London approached her like an erect cobra. Her skin crawled

at his manner. Yet he had no worse motive than she was dallying with.

Before she could exquisitely make it clear to him that with all due

deference she despised him, she saw Senator Tait hurrying toward Forbes,

greeting hastily those who stopped him and thredding the increasingly

mucilaginous crowd till he reached Forbes' side. Then the two men made

their way out beyond the intervening mass.

Persis went back into the house and danced with the Italian duke what

he called "_il trotto alla turca_." She was so distraite that she never

knew how well he made love and how badly he danced.

Later she happened upon the surreptitious Stowe Webb, and learned that

Senator Tait and Forbes were leaving Paris in the morning to take the

waters somewhere--Vichy, Carlsbad, Marienbad, or Matlock; he was not

sure where.

Now Persis regretted her hesitation. She had wasted a precious

opportunity to warm her chilled soul with a word from the beloved lips

and a look from the eyes and a pressure of the hand that were dearer

than any other in the world to her.

She was amazed at her own ability to suffer so much from the loss of so

little. She felt an impulse to be alone with her anguish, to huddle over

the hearth where the ashes could at least remind her of how warm and

cozy she once had been.

She sent for Willie, and he came with a slight elevation of manner which

showed that he had found some one to arrange him at least one

Scotch-and-soda.

He was demonstrative in the car and very affectionate in the elevator at

the Hotel Meurice, where they were stopping. This did not endear him to

Persis.

His man exchanged a glance with her maid as they peeled off their wraps.

When man and maid had been sent to bed Willie came shuffling into

Persis' dressing-room where she sat staring at her doleful beauty in the

mirror. He saw how listless she was, and was awkwardly eager to cheer

her up. He could not have depressed her more than by trying to cheer her

up. Even he realized his failure eventually and yawned sonorously:

"We're married, and I suppose we've got to stay married--for a while, at

least. But I hate to see you unhappy. It's an awful slam on me to have

you so blue before the honeymoon is really begun."

"Don't worry any more, Willie," she said, gently. "I suppose I'm just

like a child on Christmas afternoon. I always used to get blue after I'd

looked over all the presents and broken most of my toys--and grown tired

of the others--and eaten too much candy. And I thought, 'So this is the

Christmas I've waited for the whole year long! It doesn't amount to

much. I've had all that money can buy--and--and I'm too tired to

sleep.'"

"I used to feel like that, too," he said. "And I remember that I usually

turned back to some cheap old toy; usually it was a little lead

soldier--my first love."

"First love!" she murmured.

He tried to shake off gloom as a wet spaniel shakes off water.

"Oh, I say, Persis, buck up! Don't feel like this. You're so beautiful;

you're simply ripping to-night." He laid his hand on her bare arm. She

started at his touch and before she realized it gasped, "Please don't

paw me."

He stared at her, aghast: "Do you hate me as much as that?"

"Oh, I don't hate you, Willie! It's myself I hate," Persis cried. "You

mustn't mind me; I'm just a little blue and lonely."

He laughed gruesomely. "Bride and groom together on honeymoon, and both

terribly lonely! Gad! I wonder if other married couples come to feel

this way when the honeymoon turns to green cheese. And do they just

bluff it through? It reminds me of that chap in Hogarth's _Mariage a la

Mode_, where the wife is yawning and the husband is sunk back in his

chair in a dismal stupor. Only he was drunk--I think I'll get drunk."

He stumbled out to find his usual nepenthe. When he came back her door

was locked.