LVII THE LAST CARD

Ordham, having felt himself expelled from those orderly conditions in which so many men dwell for a lifetime with only an occasional abortive protest, shot out by the dynamic power of angry human forces too long accumulating, had no mind to indulge in futile regrets. He did not pretend to assert that his will was too weak to continue its inhibitions had he chosen, but he had suddenly realized that he did not choose, and that was the end of it. Accordingly, he banished the very memory of Mabel, declared war on menacing fingers shaking over the ramparts still erect to protect his future, and untormented for the first time in many weeks, inveigled sleep the moment his head touched the pillow of his berth. The passage was quiet and he slept until the boat reached Flushing. He slept again in the train, and, upon being informed in Cologne that the Munich express was an hour late, he sensibly went to a hotel and took a bath. The rest of the journey seemed interminable. It was the season for tourists, the dust and heat were insufferable. But as the train ambled into the great dép?t of Munich, he forgot discomforts, and, all his being quivering, he suddenly felt that this beautiful city of beautiful memories would give him back his youth; he had even a whimsical idea that he had left it there and she was holding it for him intact; he had but to ask for it.

He sprang from the carriage almost before the train halted, and without waiting for Hines to do all the work, walked rapidly up the platform to secure a cab. He actually had his ticket ready as he passed through the gate, instead of keeping the mob cursing behind him after his usual fashion. His head was in the air, he saw no one in the waiting crowd, until he almost ran over a tall footman who planted himself directly in his path.

“Sir,” began this person. “I beg your pardon—” He almost fell back, for the eyes he encountered were like those of a wild beast at bay. Ordham had recognized the man at once as one of the servants of the British Legation, and for the first time in his life was possessed with the lust to slay. But he recovered himself instantly, and although he felt as if the sudden fire in his veins were falling to ashes with youth and hope and life itself, he asked the man calmly enough what he wanted.

“Mr. Trowbridge sent three of us, sir, to stand at different points. Six telegrams have come for you to-day. Thomas has them. He is outside by the cabs, sir.”

Ordham followed the man, half resolving to tear up the telegrams and scatter them over the stones of Munich. There was neither pity nor sympathy in him. He felt pure flint, and had he been suddenly translated into Mabel’s presence, she would have been welcome to the discovery that he hated her. But, automatically, noblesse oblige did its work. When the telegrams were handed to him, he arranged them methodically in the order of their dates, and read them through. From them he learned that Mabel’s self-control had deserted her even in the moment of his departure. She had sent a servant to follow his cab and had discovered that he had taken the train for the Continent. She had governed her agitation in a degree until her suspicions were confirmed, but it then had become uncontrollable, and a somewhat premature confinement was the result. Then he read that the child was dead, and that, her excitement resisting all attempts to alleviate it, there was practically no question of her death unless she could be assured that he would return at once. In the final telegram Mrs. Cutting humbled herself to the dust. The doctor also had telegraphed.

Ordham, still acting under the compulsion of that little engine which civilization has attached to the modern brain, and which so often, automatically, gets up steam and keeps the track no matter how palsied the hand or blinding the mists, turned to Hines and told him to send a telegram to London and reserve a compartment for the train that left at eleven o’clock. Then he went to a hotel and took another bath and changed his linen, almost grateful to the grime of the hot and dusty day which forced him to observe these commonplace formalities. Resolving to walk to Schwabing, as much to settle his nerves as to avoid Styr’s supper hour, he left his hotel, which was in the Dinerstrasse, and strolled along endeavouring to adjust himself to the present. He had enough to agitate him, aside from the fact that he must leave Munich that night. As Styr had not sent him a line since her departure, he was convinced that her frame of mind had been no more enviable than his. He had subscribed for the principal daily newspapers of Munich and knew that she had, as ever, compelled the admiration of those critics not in league with the cabal; but since the first of July the opera house had been closed and he could appreciate how the sudden idleness must afflict her. He was not even sure that she was in Munich. She might already have gone on a Gastspiel. If that were the case, he must wait another month at least—he wondered if he should!

He sauntered along, pausing deliberately to look at the beautiful opera house, a wing of the Residenz, but dominating the square before it with its noble proportions, its brilliant blue and gold fresco of Apollo among the Muses above the portico. His heart beat thickly, and not alone for Margarethe Styr. How many times had his cab passed the mounted guard, rolled up the steep incline to the entrance where he was ever obsequiously received by the tall doorkeeper in livery (with his palm out)—and then the wide lobby full of late comers, the crush at the garde robes, the big chief of all the important little officials, in his gorgeous white and blue uniform, his cocked hat and mace, the gay foyer, and then, and then,—he came to the present abruptly. He wondered at the fluidity of youth that lingered in him, and walked more quickly down Perusastrasse.

He saw that the narrow pavements of Theatinerstrasse were crowded, as was usual at this hour, many, indeed, walking in the street itself. From five to seven was the fashionable hour for shopping and displaying one’s best frocks, and although most of the smart people were away, many remained in that salubrious city the year round, save for brief visits to Italy or neighbouring points of interest. He, too, had been accustomed to stroll in Theatinerstrasse at this hour, and he approached it with some eagerness, hoping that it would banish the present for another moment. But as he reached the corner he came to an abrupt halt and nearly lost his breath. Sailing toward him, her plump figure sheathed and swaddled in crêpe, her head, nay her nose, in the air, her crêpe veil trailing on the pavement behind her, handsome, insolent, radiant, was Frau von Wass. Ordham fled into the English drug-store, and even although he could not be sure that he had escaped the manubial eye of a lady who looked more bent upon game and conquest than ever before,—refreshed, rejuvenated, and hungry, after her long seclusion,—he could not, at a safe distance, resist staring through the glass of the door. But Frau Hélène had not seen him. She crossed Theatinerstrasse, not deigning to lift the train of skirt or veil, and entered a milliner’s shop. Ordham hastily retreated up Perusastrasse, and took a cab at the post-office. He had no desire to meet and exchange words with any chance acquaintance, however harmless, and as the cab sauntered up the Ludwigstrasse he kept his eyes averted from the pavements and reflected upon the banalities of life, its merciless anti-climaxes. Apparently there was no such thing as pure tragedy.

He looked at his watch. It was but seven o’clock, Styr’s supper hour. He told the kutscher to drive in the Englischergarten. Half an hour’s further respite—he was not averse! He felt dull, hard, nervous. His head was hot, his hands cold. In the deserted driveway of the park he took off his hat and leaned back with closed eyes. But the telegrams in his pocket did not burn him; his mind was on the approaching interview. He was quite aware that if Styr were in the villa the next hour would be far more portentous than that of his marriage, and although it never occurred to him to turn back, he faltered a bit.

But at half-past seven he presented himself at the gate of the villa. Old Kurt answered his ring and kissed his hand effusively. When told that the Frau Gr?fin was in the gallery, Ordham motioned the man aside and went rapidly down the hall and opened the door. As he saw the familiar room in the lamplight, with Styr seated at the farther end before a table, writing, his head swam, and he hardly noticed that she almost stumbled to her feet and stood staring at him.

But all she said was, “Oh!”

He cast his hat on one chair, his gloves on another, almost revolved on his heel, and then went slowly forward. But she held a cold hand across the table and motioned him to a chair. “Sit down—please. You might have telegraphed.”

She almost fell into her own chair, and he saw that her face was thin, her skin dull, her eyes in dark orbits. He had never seen her look less handsome or more alluring. But he took the chair, as she desired it. He had known that many things must be said before the last barrier went down, that she would never rush into his arms even if taken by surprise. But he was far from guessing the new barrier she had been educating her courage to erect in case he came, although she had no mind for it save as a last resource.

She realized, however, that it would be a waste of time to beat about the bush, and said, “I fancied that you would either come within a month or two or not at all.” She spoke coldly, while they eyed each other like enemies, but he observed that her breath was short.

“I came on a sudden impulse, having quite made up my mind to wait until Mabel was well again. I must return—very shortly. I arranged matters so that she would think I had gone north with my mother. But although I mechanically took every precaution to spare her, no doubt I should have come if I had been obliged to walk over her dead body.”

“What have you come for?”

“To claim you. To bind you to me forever. I have no longer the least intention of attempting to live without you. Some way it must be arranged.”

“It cannot be arranged.”

“It shall be.”

“Do you remember the promise you made me on Stanmore Heath?”

“I remember every word that has passed between us.”

“You cannot have me and your career too.”

“I shall make the attempt. If I fail, the career will have to go.”

“Do you hope for satiety before the end of the period during which a love affair may, with due precautions, be kept secret—”

“No!” he said violently. “I neither hope nor wish for anything of the sort. If I could have put you out of my mind, as I have always been able to banish other memories, I am free to confess that I should have done so. But I could as easily cease to breathe, and live. I refuse to contemplate life without you, and have come here sooner than I intended, because I cannot—will not—wait any longer to enter upon a complete understanding with you. It took me a long time to wake up; I hesitated longer than many men would have done. I am almost ashamed that I hesitated at all. It makes me seem to myself a monster of calculation. But you stood me off in the first place, and in the second,—well, aside from my career, I recognized that I had voluntarily assumed responsibilities that must bind me to a certain extent. With those I shall compromise as far as possible, but my career, I fancy, will take care of itself. If you have useful gifts and are willing to exercise them, life is only too ready to wring the last drop of blood out of your brain.”

“And do you fancy,” she cried harshly, “that I shall renounce my own career in order to follow you about and hide in back streets to be always at your beck and call? The egoism of man passes comprehension!”

But he neither coloured nor turned pale. He looked at her steadily. “Of course I expect you to do nothing of the sort. As I am not, thanks to my stupidity, in a position to marry you, as we are both too proud and ambitious deliberately to renounce the world after the fashion of those that have nothing worth speaking of to sacrifice, and as a possibly long life on this planet apart is unthinkable, we must resort to compromise. Europe is a small place and I shall see that I am not sent out of it. We can meet constantly. An attaché has little to do—it will be several years before I shall be anything more. I have much influence, I can obtain many leaves of absence. You can gast where I am accredited. I understand that I am to go to Paris. It is not a day’s journey from Munich. You could spend at least one week in every month there, and no one would think of asking what took a prima donna to Paris—any woman, for that matter!”

“And my New York season?”

“I hope you will go to New York only once. Three months will be an eternity, but I should be the last to deprive you of that supreme triumph. I wish it were over—but—well, there will be the long summers which we shall manage to spend together somewhere.”

“We should be the scandal of Europe in six months. Lord Bridgminster will not live long. Your inheritance will make you more conspicuous than ever. All the bishops in England would be writing to the Times protesting against your employment by a virtuous government. A love affair here, and every servant in Munich would know it. In great cities I should be watched by more than servants. American correspondents would sit on my doorstep. Your wife—”

“My wife, when she is well, will, in any case, learn that I shall never live with her again. She will also learn that to criticise any act of mine would be as great an impertinence as if she were one of my relations. She will have everything else that she married me for. In time she must cease to care for a man that will have none of her.”

“Poor thing!” The pity was involuntary and sincere. “How she will suffer!”

“Who does not suffer? Let her be thankful that she is made of thistle-down that any strong wind may blow about, but only from one pleasant place to another.”

“Thistle-down has been known to scatter in winds too strong. You might kill her.”

“The fit survive.”

“Oh, you are hard! You are man epitomized.”

“I have put a temporary lid on a devil’s brew. Who has not iron and steel in his nature if he amounts to anything? It comes out in one fashion and another. I am showing you my naked soul. I shall never do that to the child I married—to any one else on earth, for that matter. Mabel will be let down as easily as possible. I have every wish to spare her, and she gains in acuteness. Possibly she will let me alone at first in the hope of slowly winning me back, and meanwhile learn to do without me.”

“You should not have left her now. There is always the possibility of death in childbirth.”

She saw him turn a shade paler and stir uneasily, but his gaze did not soften nor waver. She said abruptly:

“How can you tell that were you suddenly free, I should not expect you to marry me?”

“I should certainly marry you.”

“And what compromise then? Not a woman in diplomatic society would receive me. I can see them! To shake hands with a famous artist at a reception and go away and talk about it is one thing; to receive her as an equal, to forget her scandalous history as well as her public career—why discuss the obvious? Even were I willing to renounce my career, you never could stand the position. Loyalty to me and your own pride would force you to give up the service.”

“Not now. You forget your conquest of London; its conclusion to believe none of those stories.”

“London felt quite safe in permitting itself to be captivated by the celebrity of the moment; I asked nothing further of it, encouraged none of its marriageable men, my stay was brief. If I invaded one of those Londons in petto, a British embassy, demanding to be received as an equal, do you believe that they would guilelessly accept me? They would immediately investigate and learn the truth.”

“Anything can be lived down—”

“Not a past like mine.”

“I don’t believe that there would be any investigation, if only because London first believed those outrageous stories of Levering’s, and then reacted from them. He overreached himself—”

“Levering was extraordinarily moderate. No doubt it would be as you say, as long as I remained a mere prima donna, for people are only too anxious there should be no obstacle between their conscience and the pleasure of lionizing: but the moment I gave up the stage, married one of their own—I should be stoned out of the gates and you with me.”

Ordham sprang to his feet, overturning his chair. “Enough of improbabilities. Mabel has no intention of dying. We have only the present to consider and we have wasted too many words already. You and I exist in a void. We have been driven straight toward each other for the last fourteen months. As well try to escape the morrow’s sun—”

She too had risen and pushed back her chair, but she kept the table between them. Her face flushed almost black, then turned so white that he thought her about to faint. But something in her eyes arrested him. He held his breath. Once more he almost turned on his heel.

“Then listen to the whole story,” she cried, with that hoarse muddle of accents that banished the very memory of her gift of song. “God! how am I to say it all? And is it for your sake alone? I wonder? I have vowed to save you from yourself, give you to public life; but I doubt if I could bring myself to rip the grave-clothes and show the corpse, if my own career were not so dear to me, the delight in song, in art, in holding great publics spellbound, in reigning a queen of sorts—and a singer’s time is brief enough! I have asked—oh, many times—whether I loved you or my art most, and the answer has not always been the same, not by any means. I don’t know! I don’t know!

“But not for a moment do I believe that we could compromise with the world as you have arranged in your royal manner. It would mean that one of us would have to go into obscurity, be forgotten by the world, and that would be my part. You would never give way, and I should hate you if you did. Good God! Do you think I have thought of anything else since my return to Munich? I have been tempted to scald my flesh to relieve the torments of my mind. And I tell you there is no way out, there is nothing for us in this life but what we have had already, nothing! We must part, and part to-night, before it is too late, and as there is no other way to bring you to your senses, I shall tell you that hideous history, not only to blast your love out of existence, but to inspire you with a vision of the enthusiasm with which London would receive me as a peeress, should you ever be free.”

She hurried on as if she feared he might protest, or her own courage ebb. “I have told you that I was bred in a coal-mining district, where I never saw a clean face, where I do not recall a fugitive instinct for cleanliness in myself, where human beings were merely brutes that walked on two legs instead of four. We threw our dead out into the snow to lie there until the ground thawed—until a reporter chanced along, wrote a sensational story for his newspaper, and put our overseer to shame. I did not know the alphabet; perhaps I did not know there was such a thing—I forget.

“I was not fifteen when a drummer came to the hamlet, an alert flashy young man. I think I told you that I wore hopsacking—if your imagination can picture that material. But in spite of hopsacking, in spite of a dirty face, the man saw the promise of beauty, and to do the creature justice he thought me several years older than I was, for I was already very tall. He made no impression upon me whatever during that visit, but on his return some months later he brought me candy, ribbons, many small trinkets which I could hide, and promised me unlimited silk and diamonds if I would go with him. The men of the district had not been unkind to me, except that I was made to do double the usual woman’s work on account of my physique and strength; the father of the family I lived with had no doubt given me the benefit of his protection, as I was able to earn almost as much as a boy. As for myself, I was always too busy or too tired to get into mischief. I do not fancy that the silks and jewels would have tempted me particularly, for I had never seen any, and he had some trouble making his meaning clear. But when he promised me a life of ease, a comfortable home, and a servant, I did not hesitate a moment. I stole off one night and met him at a flag station where he gave me a suit of decent clothes to put on, and the train came along half an hour later. He took me to New York. I ran away from him three times in the first month. I not only hated him, but I was made to do all the work in his dingy little flat. But the streets terrified me and I went back to him. I lived with him a year, and he was often away. During that year I learned many things. I saw children going to school and knew what it meant, for he had amused himself teaching me to read and write. I saw the outside of luxury and pleasure. He gave me good sensible clothes and took me to the theatre, where we sat in the gallery and gazed down upon a bewildering world of wealth and fashion. All the women looked to me like goddesses or angels. So did the actresses!

“The days were very long. No one in the big cheap apartment house ever spoke to me, and one day the janitress slapped me for spilling milk in the entrance and called me a name one does not forget. My man was coarse and violent. I hated him increasingly. There was but one way of escape. I had often been out with him late at night. I went out one night alone. By this time I was conscious of my looks, and from some remote recess in my slowly awakening brain the instinct for dress had crept forth. I did not return to the flat. I lived the life of the streets with complete unconcern until I finally picked up an easy-going man of middle age with a leaning toward benevolence, whom I asked to educate me, and who consented, much pleased with the element of variety thus introduced into a somewhat humdrum existence. He put me in a little flat not far from his own modest brownstone mansion, found me a respectable-looking harridan to act as chaperon and sent me to a school as his ward. I disliked him as much as my original protector, but I tolerated him until I was eighteen, and as well educated as the ordinary girl of a year or two younger. By this time he had fallen into the habit of bringing men to the flat to dinner. He was proud of his discovery, I was pert and sharp and bad-tempered, and amused him and his friends. These evenings were not very hilarious, but they must have been an immense relief to the respectable man with a sneaking blackguard in him—a common enough type—after the dull order of his family circle. They were not even fashionable; he was a merchant of some standing and a fair income, but far from being a high liver in any way.

“He looked upon me as a child, a bright waif who naturally desired to educate herself against the time when beauty should have fled, and she might aspire to some means of support above service. I made my deliberate choice of the youngest and least ill-favoured of his friends, a bachelor with a gay temper and good manners. That was my first exercise of the art of fascination. Heretofore, hardly dreaming of anything higher, I had been a mere creature of commerce. I vanquished him in a week, and transferred my belongings to another retreat. I liked this man well enough. He surrounded me with luxuries, provided me with private teachers, and gave me a liberal allowance.

“A year passed. I was bursting with life, with the desire to live. I was sick of being hidden away. My intellect forged steadily ahead in its persistent cravings, but other cravings kept pace. I wanted gayety, society, brilliancy. I wanted admiration. This man brought no other men to my apartment, took me nowhere. I fancied him in love with me and asked him to marry me. I shall never forget the expression of his face. I left him for a man who had followed me about for some time. He was what is loosely known as a man about town, with no affiliations, nothing to lose, only too delighted to spend money on a pretty woman and show her off. I drank the cup of pleasure daily. I met other women of the same sort, turned night into day, revelled in gorgeous raiment, choice food, fine wines, and a reasonable number of jewels. The man was coarse, but good-natured and generous.

“Long before this I had begun to read—literature. I now knew exactly what I was about, what I was. But the only effect of thought was to create a disgust for the particular form of vice in which I lived. Its vulgarity, its obviousness, became hateful to me. Meanwhile I had met, now and again, men of a far higher social caste, of education, polish. There was no question in my mind that my preference for men of this sort was pronounced, but to live with any one of them meant being hidden away again, and for this I had no taste. I dreaded the ennui, and I loved excitement, although I wanted it in the society of gentlemen. Suddenly I conceived the idea of going on the stage. This would give me a raison d’être, as well as a measure of independence. I did so, and soon transferred myself to a man of fashion and wealth, and a wife who was one of the handsomest, and, to judge by appearances, one of the sweetest women in New York society. I found him rather a brute, selfish, capricious, and extraordinarily mean. But I made a desperate effort to love this man, for by this time my mating instinct had developed and I wanted to love. I might as well have tried to love a brownstone front. I left him for another man of his class, and this man I did love. I tried to kill him. I once told you. For a time I forswore all men. I sold my jewels and went to Europe. But everywhere some man recognized me, and I found that I could make no friends save books, and I was too young for those to suffice. I returned to New York with a friend of the two last men that had protected me. I became quite reckless; and as by this time I was extraordinarily handsome, in a vital splendid way, and with something like genius in the matter of dress, I was more sought after among fast men than any woman of my class. I tormented many men to whom I yielded nothing. That was my revenge.

“Still I read and studied. I had not an illusion about myself. I did not pretend to excuse myself. I made money in stocks. I could have lived alone with my books. But I alternately hated and loved the excitement, the luxury, the senseless extravagance in which I indulged whenever I found a man weak enough to squander his all upon me. At that time I had but a glimmer of a belief in my histrionic talent, and even had I believed in it and been consumed with ambition, I should have met with but one reply from every manager—I was too tall. True, I might have got some man to put up the money for a starring tour and acted Lady Macbeth or some other classic r?le, but I knew that to succeed I must have practice first, and this I could not get. I was condemned to small parts in the background, and often would have lost my position altogether but for influence. Moreover, curiously enough, I avoided the notice of the public as much as possible. I kept out of the newspapers.

“I had no suspicion that anything could be made of my voice until I had lived this sort of life for some ten years. Meanwhile, as I told you, I had fits of horrible disgust, intolerable ennui. All societies save those peopled with the fast and frivolous were closed to me. Such unspeakably frivolous women! Many of them, too, were ladies born, but déclassée.

“I shut myself up once or twice again with my books, but I always went back. Life without men was no life at all. My brain seemed to be cut in half with a straight line of cleavage. One-half might contain something like a real intellect, inherited,—well, that is of no consequence,—the other was that of the courtesan pure and simple.

“Sometimes the intellectual side went to sleep altogether, especially when the men I happened to know were more interesting than commonly. Men, as a whole, are not very interesting. In the abstract, perhaps, but not to their wives or mistresses. But I was a woman of splendid lustiness, of insolent determination to cram youth to the lid with all that life offered to outcasts like myself. Circumstances had made me a waif. I would make the best of it. Several times good women came and tried to reclaim me. I argued them out of the house. What had they to offer in exchange? Would they receive me in their set, find me a husband, obliterate my reputation? One, I remember, had a sense of humour, and confessed that plain uncompanioned virtue would seem somewhat barren to herself after the luxury and beauty, the society of clever men, which at that moment I enjoyed: as a rule fast men have no taste for clever men, and they are themselves dull beyond all power of words to describe; but at this time I was protected by and half loved a Western millionnaire with a weakness for the arts and a desire to play the patron; which I encouraged. But he was shot—To return to the lady who would have reclaimed me; she added astutely that I had better take the cue from the wise prime donne and retire of my own accord. And she added, as she left the house, ‘There is always Europe, you know. And you have a brain.’

“But I had been to Europe; alone and companioned. It was soon after this that I ceased to blow hot and cold. By imperceptible degrees I came wholly to hate my life, to loathe it, to grow sick, sick, sick of men. Compositely they were brutes, the best of them. Life with such women, no doubt, brings out the worst in them. Perhaps their wives should thank us. Man in mental and spiritual undress are as disillusionizing as a certain President of the United States must have been to his household when hanging over the banisters of the White House in his red flannels and shouting for hot water.

“But I had lost the money I had made, for I had the stock-gambling fever. I thought of suicide more than once, for I not only knew of no way in which I could support myself decently, but I dreaded solitude, ennui. Suddenly I discovered my voice. That interested me for a time, although I had no idea it would ever be of any use to me. But my old teacher was enthusiastic and often inspired me with ambitious dreams, for he dangled Bayreuth before me, and at times I believed that he knew what he was talking about; at others it seemed too much like a fairy story, and I despaired.

“I made money again, this time a considerable sum, and I determined to gamble no more. I had a good friend in a banker whom I could trust, and he invested my money. I went West with that travelling company in order to break with my old connection. In time I should return and devote myself to music, even if I never went on the operatic stage. My musical tastes had been developed for several years, and at least I could live in some German or Italian city and study and enjoy music, no doubt find companionship in the society of artists.

“Then came the wreck. You know the rest. Whether you now know all, whether your imagination has carried you into all the dark corners, into every chamber of horrors—I can tell you the story in outline, but the details are beyond my strength—I do not know. I hope so. I can only reiterate that I have lived with more men than I pretend to remember, whose very names would be unfamiliar should I hear them; that for years I lived this life with my intelligence wide awake,—for I never drank, never took a drug in my life,—my literary tastes of the best, my refinement of mind growing daily; that when I finally abandoned this existence it was from no desire for reform, to be a good woman; it was without one atom of remorse. It was simply and only because I hated men, because that wreck gave me the unique opportunity to begin life over again, and my voice pointed the way. I have squeezed my character dry of the woman I was in those days—she is like an old book; I have hardly thought about her until lately. I do not even now, in this minute, think upon that time with regret. It is simply not in me to worry over what is past and done; nor could I appreciate the beauty of life as I do: no good woman has the profound appreciations that I have. But I recognize the justice of the retribution. The first departure from principles, or shall I say the social code, that I never had heard of, was inevitable. So were the next two or three years. Had I then broken away, gone to some other city before I became conspicuous, and supported myself respectably, as, with my varied cleverness, I could have done, no doubt you would forgive me that childish misstep and love me the more. Nor could that brief past ever be raked up; at all events it would be next to impossible. But I persisted in that life for thirteen years: until I was bored and satiated, until something more satisfactory offered. Were I penitent now, I might inspire your sympathy, be worthy of it; but I would not give up one of those years of misery, of vice, of horrors, if I believed that—as I do—they played their part with the coincidently progressing brain in developing that depth and intensity of genius which makes me the greatest Isolde the world will ever see. I regret nothing—nothing! And for that reason I hold myself to be the worst woman alive, and am prepared to see you turn your back and walk out without comment. I shall not ask you to stay!”

Her voice had not faltered for a moment; she had spoken with an increasing rapidity of utterance. But suddenly she broke off short, looked helplessly at Ordham, her face, which had looked flushed and full as she spoke, becoming white and pinched once more, the defiant glare dying out of her eyes. He had stood motionless during the horrid sordid story, looking straight at her, his face almost vacant, as if his brain had emptied itself of every thought, that it might receive to the brim all she chose to pour into it. So she had seen him many times at a new or absorbing play. He merely looked paler, his eyes darker. She stopped, held her breath, then:

“Well?” she stammered. “Well?”—

The colour came back to his face, and with it an intense deepening of expression. He drew out his watch, then took the six telegrams from his pocket and laid them on the table between them.

“I am sorry you chose to-night to tell me that story,” he said, in his ordinary tones, “for, as you will see by reading these telegrams, I must take the eleven o’clock express, and it is now quarter past ten. Hines is no doubt at the door—”

But she interrupted him with a cry that was almost a scream. “Good God! Do you mean to say that it makes no difference? What are you made of?”

“It might have made a difference a year ago. Now it makes none whatever—or—yes—it is odd you should not have guessed that the more you made me pity you the more I should love you. And then—I had imagined very much all you have told me, taken it for granted, at least. Perhaps it is just as well, after all, that you selected to-night for the tale, if I had to hear it, for although determined to come to an understanding with you, I was in no humour for love-making. We have now wiped the thing off the slate, and, if you don’t mind, when I return we will not refer to it.”

She glanced at the telegrams, dropped into a chair, and covered her face with her shaking hands. “Your wife will die,” she moaned, “your wife will die!”

“I have not the least idea she will die. She is as strong as you are. I dare not assume that these telegrams were sent merely to frighten me and bring me back; no doubt excitement has made her ill, and in that case there may be danger. Besides, she has lost her child. I shall go, of course. But I shall return at the earliest possible moment. We will then make our plans as deliberately as more fortunate people do when about to marry. I am capable of being faithful to one woman for a lifetime, and I shall be faithful to you. We can be unimaginably happy. But I must not miss the train.”

He went round the table, and she stood up, shaking. “Not to-night!” she said. “I cannot kiss you so soon after that story. It has brought the past too close.”

“Very well.” He took both her hands, however, and bending his face looked close into her eyes.

“Swear to me that you will be here when I return,” he said.

“Yes, I shall be here.”

His eyes contracted at some hint of irony in her voice, and his grip on her hands intensified.

“If I thought that you would make way with yourself, I should not leave you. Unless you swear that you will do nothing so foolish and so cruel, I shall not return to England, and in that case I may have my wife’s death on my head.”

She returned his intense gaze for a moment, then, wrenching her hands away, pushed him from her violently. “Do not worry!” she cried harshly. “If I kill myself, I’ll take you with me. I am not Isolde for nothing. But now, for God’s sake, go! I want to be alone.”