CHAPTER XXIII

SECRET NUMBER TWO

Three days passed, seeming like a year, and everything was just the same. Each felt in the wrong, each had a grievance; and that is fatal for a settlement.

Helena, rebuffed, was quite determined to make no more appeals: and he was silent, that mockery of talk in front of Lily over, except that now and then he would throw out questions--with the hard air of counsel cross-examining--questions that showed upon what string his mind was harping, questions to do always with the hated book. These she answered patiently, as one who knows she has deserved her punishment.

What she had not deserved, what she would not endure, Helena decided, was his whole treatment of her. Each afternoon he had an agent, publisher, friend, somebody that took him into London; each night he had some work to do--and this although he told her brutally that she had fatally wrecked his new novel. It was a fresh routine.

Helena found herself sentenced--apparently for life--to solitary confinement in a new-art cottage. Callers arrived, suspicious in their frequency, but she said, "Not At Home" to all, caring but little to feed their taste for a tit-bit of scandal. Letters came too from dear friends who congratulated her ... but these she tore up, unanswered. Others came from Mr. Blatchley--unctuous, consoling, full of the glad news that sales were leaping up as a result, and sending a big cheque as a polite advance. Helena loathed herself for not destroying this as well; but she had sold her happiness, so why not take the price? Besides, if Hubert's new book had really had to be abandoned,----!

"I hope to get some reviewing work," he said at the end of the fourth ghastly lunch. "That will be something. I am off to town about it but shall be back to dinner."

She forced herself to speak in the same level tones that he adopted. "Doesn't it occur to you," she asked, "that it's not very pleasant for me, just now, to be always left alone? I can't go out like that, with everybody saying that we've quarrelled."

"Are you blaming me, now?" he asked in icy surprise.

She refused to argue this; she felt that it was mean. "What am I to do," she said, "all these lonely afternoons?"

"I should send for your good friend Alison," he answered with a grim humour, and went out to his own room.

Helena sighed, a sigh of despair; then she got up with more energy than during all these days, buoyed by a resolve.

Anything was better than inaction. Even a row would not be so awful as this freezing calmness! She would do something--must!

She took his advice. She went to the telephone and left a message with the Studio porter. She asked Mr. Alison to tea.

Then she went back to the drawing-room, and as she tidied the neglected flowers there was on her tight-pressed lips the whole eternal mystery of the sphinx-woman.

He arrived punctually to the moment--one second after the tea-urn--secretly nervous but outwardly full of a relieved delight. "I am forgiven then?" he cried, and she felt cheered already. It was something to talk. Besides, he really _did_ look funny.... He laid on the table some roses he had bought and now had not the courage to present.

"I'm afraid I was a pig," she answered, nobly. One feud was quite enough for her. "I know you never meant to do it and you were awfully good about it all till then. You helped me such a lot."

"And I hope to do the same again," he said with an absurd little bow.

"Not give me away again?" she asked, mainly as a good excuse for smiling. But really she felt happier already. Tea smelt almost good again!

He looked at her with the reproachful eyes of a whipped hound. "You know I shouldn't, you know I never meant to. And I'm afraid you'll never trust me any more." He sighed cavernally.

"That's just what I'm going to do," she said, and then she could not refrain from laughing, for he looked so alarmed at new responsibility. "Oh, nothing like the other," she went on gaily, "this is a most harmless secret."

"What is it?" he answered keenly. "Tell me?" He hoped that Brett was teaing out somewhere.

"Well," said Helena, giving him his tea, "you know you said I ought to follow up the other with a second book and I said no? Well, now I think I will." She felt heroic and excited, merely saying it. It was her new resolve.

"Hooray!" cried Geoffrey Alison, catching some of the great moment's fire. "Blatchley _will_ be bucked. He was immensely keen."

"Bother Blatchley," answered Helena. "I think he has behaved disgracefully and it is all his fault. But I can't stand this any longer; Hugh won't even speak to me; besides, if I write other books about quite different husbands, nobody can say they are all us."

"Excellent," said the other, grasping the involved idea at once, "and so----"

Helena laughed. "So now I'm going to write one about a woman married to an artist, and you must give me all the local colour."

"Shall _I_ be Zoë's husband?" he asked eagerly. It still pleased him to say things like that.

"Oh no," she said, unconsciously ruthless, "no more than Hugh was the first; but I mean you must tell me what--well, what artists do."

"They paint," he answered gravely; and that made her laugh again. Ally was not a man to trust; she had been a real fool; but he was splendid company. He told her everything that artists did. He made her laugh a lot. Those endless hours of misery seemed nightmares of the past--until she was alone again.

But when business released Hubert Brett conveniently in time for their silent meal, he found in the hall a wife somehow less broken and submissive; less the girl-penitent serving a long sentence, much more a woman with secret laughter playing round the hard lines of her mouth.

"I'm glad you've got back," she said in the usual tone. "I took your advice and asked Mr. Alison to tea."

He had the sense to make no answer. But back in his study, he was weak enough to slam the door. And she was glad to hear it.