CHAPTER V.

They sought the concierge and met him, all flustered, coming out of the office by the side entrance on his way to the room of tumult which they had just quitted. Britton added to his cares by despatching him with a message to Maud Morris in the ballroom.

"Tell Mrs. Morris that I am waiting in her drawing-room," he said. "Ask her if she will take the elevator at once and see me on an important matter."

The concierge made expressive gestures with his hands.

"Not Madame Morris," he suggested, somewhat puzzled. "Monsieur means Mademoiselle!"

"Ah! yes, of course," returned the Englishman, quickly, "A mere slip of the tongue! My message is for Mademoiselle, for Miss Morris. You will find her on that large settee just at the entrance of the salon."

He smiled grimly at the precise classification which to-morrow would be of a different value. The ghost of the smile lingered on his lips, as, disdaining the lift, he pulled Trascott towards the stairs.

"Let us walk up," he begged. "It will give me time to think."

Trascott moved beside him automatically and left Britton to his own reflections. That, he thought, was undoubtedly the surest way to victory.

Their ascent was slow and silent, their footfalls deadening to an odd, mysterious void on the thickly-padded steps. The mounting sensation, the absence of noise from his movements, seemed to lift Britton away from himself. His personality was effaced, in the physical sense, and the basic impulses which influenced his course of existence lay bared before an inner tribunal.

The vaster issue remained with him; the moral measure applied to his strength alone; the portentous effects of the next few minutes would be essentially moulded at the dictum of his emotional tendencies. The present exigency could be neither flouted nor shunned. This difficulty of another's evolving, augmented in no small measure by his own unseeing folly, demanded immediate and decisive solution. Apology was cowardice and parley an affront to Britton's frank fibre, and both of them smacked of guilt.

The suite of rooms taken by Maud Morris was situated on the first floor just to the right of the public hall, near the landing. She had at her disposal a luxurious drawing-room, a more luxurious boudoir, and bath and sleeping apartments.

Trascott stopped at the stair-head and folded his arms, signifying his exclusion from the approaching developments.

"I don't think you will have any need of me," he ventured reassuringly.

Britton vouchsafed no reply. The swift momentary reaction he experienced did not disturb the hard, emotionless mask of his features, and the sudden, peculiarly human revolt stirred by his unsatisfied heart-hunger was crushed with a tremendous summoning of will-power.

He swiftly traversed the corridor and entered the drawing-room.

It was empty, and a poignant chagrin struck Britton, inflicting pain scarcely definable from that of humiliation and disgrace, as he realized that perhaps Maud Morris, detecting impending exposure, had suddenly clutched seclusion as a safeguard with that wanton spirit and careless indifference of the time-hardened trifler.

But Britton was wrong in this thought!

While he paced a few steps in indecision, the boudoir curtains parted, and through the soft, shaded illumination of the room Maud Morris looked out at him.

"I am waiting for you," she called, with a tremulous smile which indicated the fluttering state of her feelings, yet left the origin of that uncertainty in doubt.

If it was a bait, Britton snapped like a deluded fish. The sudden presentation of the less disagreeable side of the situation weakened his guard. He acted before he reflected, and stepped forward into the boudoir.

The tapestry fell in place behind him, and with its silken swish Britton felt the error he had unthinkingly committed. This boudoir, which enthralled with its essentially feminine appointments, was the worst place in the world for rallying stern resolutions and formulating all-embracing decisions such as Britton proposed to make. The place could only shake his sincere purpose. The drawing-room, in graver setting, would have been far safer for him!

He put a rigid curb upon his impulses, and attempted to shut out the powerful charm of low-burning rose lights, Bohemian color, and lavish decoration, but a stronger influence than these laid its hold upon him, that delicate, indefinable, alluring fragrance which is found only within woman's precincts, and which attracts mightily, like woman's love, because of its tender, subtle elusiveness.

Then, more compelling than the sense-conquering color-effect, more entrancing than the pervading perfume, was the magic of Maud Morris herself. To Britton's mind, in moments wholly calm and lucid, he thought he had never seen perfections of face and form which approached hers. Such beauty as she possessed was technically matchless, but, in general, there are intervals when fascination flags and any existing flaws in the object of admiration force attention.

When Britton was cursed with these critical flashes, as he was accustomed to inwardly express it, he could detect a lack of something-it might have been soul-behind the level splendor of her blue eyes, but if he tried to fathom these depths and define this missing attribute, the mere outward splendor, like the crystal sheen of deep, clear water, was dazzling enough to make him dizzy and engulf him, and the effort at introspection went unrewarded.

So Britton stood wrestling with the spell of environment, hurling mental refusals upon the suggestive enticement of the boudoir atmosphere and battling against the magical allurement of the woman who was the climax in the dainty sphere of exotic loveliness.

She seemed framed in the shell of the room as if it had been especially designed to harmonize with her charms. Her pale, silver-colored gown swept about her feet, leaving her figure in a contour of marvellous grace; the arms and bosom, full and rounded, came out from it, white as ivory; her face, beautiful as a rare orchid, with the crowning glory of her hair above, was one to weaken a strong man.

Harassed by a flood of doubts and regrets, Britton gazed at her with wide, darkened eyes, the shame of his position vying in torture with the pang of his loss. He had come to judge, to condemn and to scorn, but his capacity for this was submerged in painful realization of the black void of the future through which he must walk.

Maud Morris recognized the facing of a crisis in his attitude, and she nervously clasped her slim fingers as she read something of what was passing in his mind.

"Rex, you know!" she cried, with a sort of of awed inspiration tinged by an inflection of fear.

"Yes, I know," he answered despairingly. "I know everything! God help me-and you!"

There was no reproach in his words, rather a prayer. The thing before him was too beautiful to curse. He had plainly misjudged his strength and underrated his task. The animated presence of her he loved filled both his physical and mental vision with impressionistic power. The passion which he thought had died at the instant of Ainsworth's announcement grew in magnitude as a spring torrent grows with a rush of sorrowful rain. It mastered him, crushed his scorn and turned condemnation upon his own head. To the great credit of Britton's manlier qualities a phase of unconscious heroism ruled as the foremost factor in his new solution of the problem.

"Good-bye," he said with a near approach to kindness, "and forgive me if you can. I think I am the one to blame."

He held out his hand before turning to leave the boudoir. Maud Morris snatched it rather than took it, apprehension in her eyes.

"Good-bye, Rex?" she whispered. "You can't go from me. Think of how we've cared. Think of the invisible ties."

Britton's mouth hardened, showing his disgust. Her speech came nearer rousing him to voluble contempt than any inherent feeling.

"Ties!" he exclaimed severely. "Ignominy upon a marriage bond is no tie. It is rather a matter of expiation!"

His words had the intonation of farewell, and he laid one hand on the portieres, but Maud Morris rushed forward with a cry, holding him with a passionate caress which was either the height of consummate acting or the essence of mad desire.

Her touch thrilled Britton for one vivid, insane moment, and he stood like a man in a dream listening to her vociferous pleading.

"Take me with you!" she cried. "Biskra is two days by rail, Sidi Okba two hours more by carriage-then the desert! The Sahara, Rex, do you hear? No one shall ever find us!"

Britton's brain swung slowly back through bewilderment at the mention of detail, and he stared at her with a gradual horror growing in his eyes as his idol ground itself to dust.

"The desert, dear,-and oblivion," she murmured again.

A hundred scenes flashed before his sight. One stood out-the picture of Trascott waiting for him, his fine face plunged in anxiety and a strong prayer in his generous heart. This psychic vision completed Britton's revulsion, and he violently pushed the woman away.

"The desert-and hell for us both!" he fiercely cried. "Let me get out of this!"

In that moment of repulse Maud Morris assumed her true character, and Britton read behind her eyes for the first time. She did not lack a soul; the soul leaped out at him, but it was as the advance of a serpent, malignant and revengeful. Her beauty lost itself in a hard, bright mask of undistinctive flesh and eyes.

"If you go, I'll ruin you!" she warned, in a voice hoarse with jealous fury. "I'll spoil you for the dear eligibles from one end of England to the other!"

Britton gazed at her transformation before answering, and wondered why he had loved her.

"Your husband will do that," he said at last. "I hardly expect to keep out of court."

"Reflect!" she said harshly. "He cannot do it as I can."

The knots of the portiere cords would not yield to Britton's pull, and he tore the silken curtains down in a heap upon the floor. Their clinging folds seemed symbolic of their siren-like owner, and the man shuddered as he dropped them from his fingers.

"You will not reflect?"

"The enormity of your proposal precludes reflection," said Britton, witheringly.

"It's war then?" Her tone was steely.

"It's war, if you put it that way," he wearily responded; "but hadn't you better spare your own name?"

She laughed shortly.

"Mine will not count," she said mockingly. "The public will sympathize with the deluded wife. While holding me blameless, English society will haul your reputation over the cobblestones till there isn't a shred of it left."

Britton regarded her silently for a long, comprehensive minute, and went swiftly out of the boudoir. She followed, still reluctant to give up the battle.

"There is another consideration-the attitude of the Honorable Oliver Britton in this disgrace," she said, using the last and most cruel weapon of all. "Do you know what your uncle will do? If you don't, I can tell you!"

Britton paled perceptibly, as he met the battery of her eyes, upon the drawing-room threshold. He made a denunciatory wave of his hand and closed the door sharply.

Trascott had no words. He gave Britton a fervent finger-clasp and a bright smile of relief and thankfulness. No elation he had ever felt at the rescuing of some poor wretch from the English slums compared with his joy at Britton's personal victory.

They used the elevator. At the bottom of the lift, Ainsworth waited beside a servant who held their coats and hats.

"Well, what is it?" questioned Britton, earnestly.

"He says it's law, as soon as they reach home," replied Ainsworth, grimly. "Have you any thought of cruising in other parts?"

Retreat was repugnant to a strong man like Britton. He shook his head decidedly.

In fifteen minutes they had reached the wharf and boarded the _Mottisfont_. She rode at a single anchor chain, and twin coils of grayish smoke issued from her double funnels.

It was the second watch, and the mate held the bridge. Britton called to him.

"Have you a head of steam?"

"Plenty, sir," the mate replied.

"Then weigh your anchor!"

"Aye, aye, sir. Where away?"

"Home to New Shoreham!"