第86章 XXVIII(1)

HER husband's note had briefly said:

"To-day at four o'clock. N.L."

All day she pored over the words in an agony of longing, trying to read into them regret, emotion, memories, some echo of the tumult in her own bosom. But she had signed "Susy," and he signed "N.L." That seemed to put an abyss between them. After all, she was free and he was not. Perhaps, in view of his situation, she had only increased the distance between them by her unconventional request for a meeting.

She sat in the little drawing-room, and the cast-bronze clock ticked out the minutes. She would not look out of the window: it might bring bad luck to watch for him. And it seemed to her that a thousand invisible spirits, hidden demons of good and evil, pressed about her, spying out her thoughts, counting her heart-beats, ready to pounce upon the least symptom of over- confidence and turn it deftly to derision. Oh, for an altar on which to pour out propitiatory offerings! But what sweeter could they have than her smothered heart-beats, her choked-back tears?

The bell rang, and she stood up as if a spring had jerked her to her feet. In the mirror between the dried grasses her face looked long pale inanimate. Ah, if he should find her too changed--! If there were but time to dash upstairs and put on a touch of red ....

The door opened; it shut on him; he was there.

He said: "You wanted to see me?"

She answered: "Yes." And her heart seemed to stop beating.

At first she could not make out what mysterious change had come over him, and why it was that in looking at him she seemed to be looking at a stranger; then she perceived that his voice sounded as it used to sound when he was talking to other people; and she said to herself, with a sick shiver of understanding, that she had become an "other person" to him.

There was a deathly pause; then she faltered out, not knowing what she said: "Nick--you'll sit down?"

He said: "Thanks," but did not seem to have heard her, for he continued to stand motionless, half the room between them. And slowly the uselessness, the hopelessness of his being there overcame her. A wall of granite seemed to have built itself up between them. She felt as if it hid her from him, as if with those remote new eyes of his he were staring into the wall and not at her. Suddenly she said to herself: "He's suffering more than I am, because he pities me, and is afraid to tell me that he is going to be married."

The thought stung her pride, and she lifted her head and met his eyes with a smile.

"Don't you think," she said, "it's more sensible-with everything so changed in our lives--that we should meet as friends, in this way? I wanted to tell you that you needn't feel--feel in the least unhappy about me."

A deep flush rose to his forehead. "Oh, I know--I know that--" he declared hastily; and added, with a factitious animation:

"But thank you for telling me."

"There's nothing, is there," she continued, "to make our meeting in this way in the least embarrassing or painful to either of us, when both have found ...." She broke off, and held her hand out to him. "I've heard about you and Coral," she ended.

He just touched her hand with cold fingers, and let it drop.

"Thank you," he said for the third time.

"You won't sit down?"

He sat down.

"Don't you think," she continued, "that the new way of ... of meeting as friends ... and talking things over without ill- will ... is much pleasanter and more sensible, after all?"

He smiled. "It's immensely kind of you to feel that."

"Oh, I do feel it!" She stopped short, and wondered what on earth she had meant to say next, and why she had so abruptly lost the thread of her discourse.

In the pause she heard him cough slightly and clear his throat.

"Let me say, then," he began, "that I'm glad too--immensely glad that your own future is so satisfactorily settled."

She lifted her glance again to his walled face, in which not a muscle stirred.

"Yes: it--it makes everything easier for you, doesn't it?"

"For you too, I hope." He paused, and then went on: "I want also to tell you that I perfectly understand--"

"Oh," she interrupted, "so do I; your point of view, I mean."

They were again silent.

"Nick, why can't we be friends real friends? Won't it be easier?" she broke out at last with twitching lips.

"Easier--?"

"I mean, about talking things over--arrangements. There are arrangements to be made, I suppose?"

"I suppose so." He hesitated. "I'm doing what I'm told-simply following out instructions. The business is easy enough, apparently. I'm taking the necessary steps--"

She reddened a little, and drew a gasping breath. "The necessary steps: what are they? Everything the lawyers tell one is so confusing .... I don't yet understand--how it's done."

"My share, you mean? Oh, it's very simple." He paused, and added in a tone of laboured ease: "I'm going down to Fontainebleau to-morrow--"

She stared, not understanding. "To Fontainebleau--?"

Her bewilderment drew from him his first frank smile. "Well--I chose Fontainebleau--I don't know why ... except that we've never been there together."

At that she suddenly understood, and the blood rushed to her forehead. She stood up without knowing what she was doing, her heart in her throat. "How grotesque--how utterly disgusting!"

He gave a slight shrug. "I didn't make the laws ...."

"But isn't it too stupid and degrading that such things should be necessary when two people want to part--?" She broke off again, silenced by the echo of that fatal "want to part." ...

He seemed to prefer not to dwell farther on the legal obligations involved.

"You haven't yet told me," he suggested, "how you happen to be living here."