Part 7

"What has that to do with the question?" he replied. "Neither do I know that I love you--we must try----"

"I know," she interrupted; "you don't love me--and love is the one thing that could heal the wounds the past two years have made--for us both."

"Do you love that scoundrel Amherst?" he asked.

"I do not," was the calm answer--"and you have termed him rightly--he _is_ a scoundrel."

"Do you love any other man?"

"I do not!" looking him straight in the face.

"Then let us try it, Stephanie," he said.

But she shook her head again.

"It is not just to you----"

"Let me be the judge of that," he cut in.

"Neither is it just to me," she ended. "You will take me back for the sake of appearances. You think to save me and yourself some temporary unpleasantness by obviating a divorce--by preventing scare headlines in the papers. You don't see that you would be making untold unpleasantness for us both through the remainder of our lives. When we are apart and need only the Court's severing decree, why should we assume a life of wretchedness for both? I bear the heavier burden now. I am content to bear it for a little while--until the world has forgotten--rather than to purchase that forgetfulness by a reconciliation which would be only in name--and scarcely in name, indeed."

"Why should it be only in name?" he asked, leaning toward her. "It won't be with me, dear."

"You are very good to say so," she replied--"but you'll think differently in a month--in a week possibly. Amherst will be ever between us--you will always see him; and as time passes you will see him only the more. Nothing we can do will remove him--he will be persistently present--you can't see me without thinking of him--and of what I did with him. And that can have only one result--renewed unhappiness for us both, and eventually the final break. Therefore why not let the break be now--when it is anticipated by every one and is so much easier for us both?"

She might have added--what was in her mind--that with a man of strong and resolute purpose the experiment would not be so hazardous of success; but with one of his character the issue was not even doubtful--it would be decided before it was begun.

A spasm of anger had crossed his face at her reference to Amherst and herself, and for a moment she had hoped that he would recall his offer--but as she talked it passed, and when he spoke it was with quiet resolution.

"Wouldn't we better eliminate Amherst from the question?" he asked. "I understand that episode has ended!"

"It has, indeed!" she answered,--"as between Amherst and me--but it can never end as between you and me."

"As between you and me it is as we make it," he returned. "I engage that I shall never, by word or act, refer to Amherst, nor to what you have done. It will be as though it had never been. Is not that satisfactory?"

"You can't engage to control your thoughts," she replied; "and thoughts tincture acts, however much we may strive to avoid it. It's generous, more generous than I can say, for you to offer to take me back--but it cannot be, Harry. We may as well face the matter as it is--there need be no concealment between us surely. I do not love you--I never shall love you. You do not love me--you never can love me. It is much wiser to end things now than to drag them along a little while and end them."

"Why do you say I do not love you?" he asked.

"Because you admitted it yourself a moment since, and because, aside from that, I know it."

He made a denying gesture.

"I loved you when we were married," he broke out.

"We both loved then--or thought we did--but we both have learned much, since that day at St. Luke's." She sat up and bent nearer to him. "And one of the things we have learned is that we are better apart--and I have proven it--by running away with another man. And you have proven it--by not following instantly and taking me from him--or killing him."

"What have I proven by my present attitude?" he demanded.

"Your magnanimity--but not your love. And as I said, love alone would justify a reconciliation now, or give the slightest warrant for the future."

For a time he made no answer, looking at her steadily with thoughtful eyes. At last he spoke.

"Am I to understand then that you refuse my offer?" he asked.

"I refuse!" she answered. "For both our sakes--yours as well as mine--I refuse your offer."

There was a finality in her manner that left him no present ground for hope. It was useless to argue further at this time, and he knew it. He arose to go. She arose also.

Then a sudden, irresistible impulse came over him. Scarce knowing what he did, nor the reason why he did it, he seized her in his arms and crushed her to him.

She fought him in silence; with all her strength she strove to break from his encircling arms--that held her only the tighter, while his face drew slowly nearer hers. Her breath came in fierce gasps, as closer and closer he pressed her--his lips ever nearer and nearer to her own.

"Let me go!" she panted. "Let me go!"

But he only smiled. The perfume from her hair, the warmth of her body, the intoxication from her person were working their due. He was only a man--and she was only a woman.

He kissed her on the lips fiercely--once--twice--a score of times--straining her to him with an intensity that left her helpless.

"You coward!--you coward!--you coward!" she kept repeating.

And every time he kissed her more fiercely than the last.

Then, suddenly as he had seized her, he loosed her and stepped back--so suddenly, indeed, she swayed and almost fell.

"You beast! you miserable beast!" she breathed, wiping away his kisses.

He laughed, a low mocking laugh.

"Did you call Amherst a beast?" he asked.

"You miserable beast!" she repeated.

"Who has a better right?" he queried.

"You miserable beast," she said again.

"Who has a better right to kiss you than your husband? Your lover?" he sneered.

"Go!" she cried, pointing to the door. "Go! and never speak to me again."

"Why all these melodramatics?" he inquired. "What have I done that is wrong--how have I offended?"

"I have asked you to leave the house," she answered. "If you go quietly at once well and good. If you do not"--laying her hand on the button in the wall behind her--"I shall ring for Tompkins and bid him summon the police."

"Still melodramatic!" he laughed.

She pressed the button.

"You shall decide whether the butler shows you out or summons an officer," she replied.

Tompkins appeared in the doorway and waited.

She looked calmly at Lorraine, and Lorraine looked at her--then he held out his hand.

"Good-bye!" he said.

"Good-bye!" she answered, and turned away.

He took a step toward her, and dropped his voice so that Tompkins could not hear.

"And I'm not so sure _now_ that I want a divorce," he said--"and _you_ can't get one."

Her only reply was the slightest shrug of the shoulders and an expressive motion of her hands--she did not even take the trouble to turn her head.

And after a second's hesitation, Lorraine faced about and strode away.

VIII

THE SUMMONS

A month went by and Lorraine made no move to obtain a divorce--neither did he appear to seek a reconciliation. At first Society was aghast with wonder, then it gradually accepted the course as one of Lorraine's eccentricities of character. At the beginning he had made no secret of his purpose to institute suit whenever personal service could be obtained on her--although he was of course aware that personal service was not necessary in such a case. He had a rather Quixotic idea of the matter, it seemed. Now when he was given the opportunity, and had openly expressed his intention to proceed forthwith, he suddenly veered off and became non-committal and non-communicative--even to his intimate friends.

They did not know--no one knew from him--that he had offered reconciliation and that Stephanie had refused it. On this he was absolutely silent. He had been injured enough before all the world without giving it fresh food for gossip in this new injury that was almost as searing to his pride as the other. To have his wife run off with another man was humiliating enough, but to have his offer to forget and forgive, and to reinstate calmly declined, was mortifying to the last degree. Even to Cameron he could not bring himself to confess such a shameful thing.

And the more he brooded over it, the greater seemed the wrong and the more he grew to hate--not Stephanie, but Amherst. Amherst's was the injury: if he had not led her astray there never would have been the scandal--and her love would not have been lost. No--Stephanie was not to blame! It was Amherst! Amherst had entered his home and had robbed him of his dearest possessions--his wife and his wife's love; made of him a mock and a jest--a thing despised or pitied, as the case might be. He imagined that he was the butt of all Society--the forsaken husband at whom they were laughing slyly for his incompetence in not protecting his own.

But instead of confiding his notion to Cameron or to some other friend, as he was wont to do, he buried it deep in his heart--and fed upon it until it became the main-spring of his life: to square accounts with Amherst. And as Amherst grew the blacker to him, Stephanie grew the whiter--until finally he even acquitted her of all voluntary wrong. She was Amherst's victim, as much as himself.

Which, only to a certain extent, was true. Amherst had led her astray--but she had gone willingly, and with never a thought of the husband who was too weak or too heedless to hold her to propriety and duty.

And though he nursed his wrath to keep it warm, he did not venture--yet--to intrude on Stephanie again. He went his usual way; and with the craft of his passion he was changed only in one respect:--upon the subject of his married life, its past and its future, concerning which he had once been so voluble, he now never spoke.

And unless he spoke first, no one could speak to him. Though every one marvelled exceedingly--and many expressed their marvel to one another in becoming or unbecoming fashion, depending on the respective point of view and the respective disposition of the expressor--usually a woman.

Stephanie, meanwhile, went her way with the same air of contemptuous indifference that she had shown on the Club-house piazza the afternoon of her reappearance.

At first, Society had resented it--a few resented it actively--but soon they began to soften a bit, and not to be quite blind when she was in the vicinity. Stephanie Lorraine was of unimpeachable birth. Her ancestors had been in Society as long as there was any Society to be in--except aborigines; and if one, under such circumstances, assumes an attitude of superiority, the general herd will follow in time--even though the way be through the avenue of the Divorce Court.

The difficulty in the case was that Mrs. Postlewaite and Mrs. Porterfield--the "Queen P's," as they were called--were a trifle recalcitrant. They ruled Society and they had not approved of Stephanie's doings even before she married. She had been quite too disregardful of conventions. Her affair with Amherst was shameful enough, they averred, but when it had culminated in the elopement, they were outraged beyond words--figuratively speaking, that is; there was no paucity and little repression of language in the actual. And when she suddenly returned, without a warning or even an intimation, and came up to the Club-house in the most casual manner--as though she had done _nothing! nothing! nothing!_ they were enraged at her "effrontery." It was the end of their reign, they saw, unless she were made to pay penance for her offence in sackcloth and ashes. The younger set would defy their authority--they were near to defying it now, with their new-fangled ideas and disregard for every convention that stood for the old order.

They might overlook some things, even though they were bizarre and questionable, but Stephanie's offence was beyond the pale. If she were permitted to come back to all her old privileges, and to go unpunished by Society for her crime against it, then the reign of the dissolute and depraved had begun. And they shook their heads gravely, and with much decision resolved that it must not be.

So they let their decision be known and set quickly to work. It was acquiesced in by almost all elders and by those who naturally follow the leaders. Of the others, the majority thought that there was no haste in the matter, and composed themselves and awaited developments. The few who were independent, and accustomed to do as they pleased, were uninfluenced by the rest--but they waited also. And those that the Queen P's had thought would receive Stephanie with open arms--the fast members of the younger set--held off, and even edged away. They realized that the Lorraine affair had made their own conduct all the more marked, and they were afraid to take her up. As one of them put it: "A fellow feeling's all right--but we're not running an eleemosynary institution at this stage of the game." The degrees of intimacy, moreover, could be gauged by the manner of salutation. Some did not speak at all--some spoke only when it could not be avoided--some spoke when the occasion required--some spoke always but with a certain reserve--some spoke naturally, but went no further--some were as they had always been--friends.

And Stephanie met them in kind.

Gladys Chamberlain, Elaine Croyden, Dorothy Tazewell, Margaret Middleton, Helen Burleston, Sophia Westlake, and a few others among the women, were her friends. Pendleton, Burgoyne, Croyden, Mortimer, Fitzgerald, Devereux, Westlake, Devonshire and a score of others among the men. There is never a dearth of men where the woman is a beauty and well-born--that she is also a woman with a past only adds to her attractiveness.

To but one person, other than her mother, did Stephanie reveal the incident of Lorraine's visit--and then not until some time thereafter.

It was one evening when she and Pendleton had dined together alone at her home--Mrs. Mourraille being out of town for several days--and were sitting afterward in the piazza-room in the moonlight.

"Stephanie," said he--after a pause, and apropos of nothing--dropping his cigarette into the ash tray on the taboret between them and lighting another, "what do you make out of Lorraine--isn't his conduct exceedingly queer?"

"In what way?" she asked.

"In not applying for a divorce."

"Is that an exhibition of queerness on his part?" she smiled.

"It is--he never does the natural thing. What would be idiotic in a sensible chap is just what one expects from him. That Saturday at the Club-house--afterward, you know--he was going to begin action on Monday. And Sunday you had the peculiar scene in the Park where he threatened you with its immediate filing and so on--yet since that day no one has ever heard him mention divorce."

"Rather an unusual time for Harry to hold to one opinion!" she laughed. "I should say a change is long overdue." And when Pendleton looked at her with a puzzled air she added: "He told me he would not get a divorce--and that I could not. I'm waiting for him to change his mind again and to file his papers. I am advised that once filed they cannot be withdrawn without my consent, and that I am permitted to press for a decision."

"He told you that Sunday in the Park?" he exclaimed.

"No--it was somewhat later in the week. He came here, and--offered to--take me back--to forget and forgive. And I declined."

"You declined?" he marvelled. "Did you appreciate what you were throwing away, Stephanie?"

"Yes--a worthless man, for one thing," she replied.

"And what else?" he asked, leaning a bit forward.

"A life-time of incompatibility and discord."

"And what else?"

"The opportunity for Society to overlook my--sin," she answered.

He nodded. "Just so--and you choose against Society. Was it wise, Stephanie; was it wise, do you think?"

"What do _you_ think it was, Montague?" she asked with an intimate little smile.

"I think it was very foolish," he replied promptly; then added--"from the point of expediency."

"And very wise from the point of happiness and myself--_n'est ce pas_?" she smiled.

"Yes," he said; "unquestionably, yes--but few would have had the courage to refuse."

"Let me tell you about it," she broke in. She disliked praise even from her best friends, and she feared Pendleton would not remember. "Mother was dreadfully disappointed, I fear--though she has not mentioned the matter since. It was the expedient way, of course; it would minimize the scandal, and things would go along pretty much as before. That is just the difficulty. I couldn't return to the old way. I could not endure it for a moment--not even long enough to make a show at the reconciliation so that I might purchase Society's forgetfulness. No, not even if I could be assured, before going back to him, of ultimately being divorced."

"I understand," he said.

"You always understand, Montague," she replied. "You're the most satisfactory of friends."

He made a deprecatory gesture. He was as averse as she to praise.

"You were about to tell of the Lorraine offer?" he reminded her.

And she told him all--not withholding even the final scene.

"I am not surprised," he remarked, when she had finished. "It is just what one might expect from Lorraine. He was not too strong-minded to start with, and this affair seems to have put him entirely to the bad. He is keeping his own counsel now, however, which is suspicious. As you say, he is long overdue for a change of mind, and it doesn't seem to be forthcoming. How does he act when he sees you--if you've noticed?"

"It is rather queer but I haven't seen him since that afternoon. Possibly because I've been at the Club very rarely--not over a half-dozen times, I should say--you were with me on the most of them."

"At least he has been quiescent," Pendleton added--"and sticking to business, I hear, most assiduously. In that respect your coming back seems to have steadied him."

"I'm glad to have done him some good indirectly," she smiled.

"He still is just a boy," said Pendleton, "despite his thirty years. He has always had his own way, with nothing to settle him until this came--and it completely unsettled him. So much so that very few of the men had much sympathy for him. It went to you, Stephanie, instead. In fact, the men had the matter right from the very first; they knew Lorraine, they knew Amherst, and they knew--other things, as well."

"And the women?" she asked.

"Oh, damn the women!" he replied.--"I beg your pardon, Stephanie--but it is Mrs. Postlewaite and Mrs. Porterfield and all their kind, I mean. A small number are discriminating and broad minded, like Gladys Chamberlain and Elaine Croyden and Sophia Westlake and a few more. They are friends--the rest are worthless bundles of dress goods--manikins, if you please, pulled this way and that by the fetish of the commonplace and the proper."

"Don't tell Mrs. Postlewaite!" laughed Stephanie. "She would have a fit."

"It might do her some good if she had. I despise those people who are so smug and self satisfied in their assumed superiority that they think their _ipse dixit_ inflates the social balloon. It's a positive pleasure to have some one kick a hole in it just to show them they're wrong."

"As I did, you mean," said she. "However, it would have been quite as effective had I made another sort of kick. I punctured the balloon, all right, but its entangling folds may stifle me. At least they are pretty stifling at present. It would be a small matter if I were a man--a man can do things and be none the worse for them; but I'm a woman--and it is a powerful big undertaking, Montague, for a woman to kick the social balloon. Generally the balloon flies back and overwhelms her."

"It's not going to overwhelm you," he insisted.

"Not if you and the rest of my friends can prevent--and I think you can," she replied. "I am fortunate in my friends--that is where I'm very, very lucky."

He smiled sympathetically. He knew what she did not:--the Governors of the Country Club were meeting that night and her resignation as a member would likely be requested.

The Queen P's and _their_ allies had accomplished so much of their plans for her punishment. The majority of the Board was made up of men who sought to be popular, and who kow-towed to Mrs. Postlewaite and her clique as the ultimate authority. The popular thing was to run with the sentiment, and so they were running. The few younger members were sure to vote against it, but they would be too weak in numbers to control. He would not tell her, however, for something might yet intervene to prevent--the want of a quorum; the want of a sufficient majority; the want of anything would cause the matter to be postponed.

As an echo to his thoughts came her next remark.

"I have considered, Montague, that it might be well if I were to resign from the Country Club," she said. "I know that almost all the women members are violently opposed to me, and it seems scarcely just to the few friends I have there for me to put them on the defensive and oblige them to make a fight. The Queen P's are hot against me, and they can render it exceedingly unpleasant for the meager opposition, if they are so minded--and I think we may assume that they are. What would you advise?"

For a while he was silent--his fingers playing slowly over the arm of his chair. He was disposed to answer no--she should not be forced into resigning, at this late day, by all the sentiment the infernal women could muster. Had she acted promptly on her return it would have been entirely voluntary; now it savored too much of compulsion, and yet without any one bearing the responsibility. On the other hand, if she permitted the Club to _demand_ her resignation, she did not make the actual opposition any more violent, while all those who opposed such radical action--and he knew their number was not small--would naturally be favorable, in a greater or less degree, to her cause. In other words, she would stand to lose none and to gain many.

"What would you advise me to do, Montague?" she repeated.

"I would advise you not to resign. Hold on--and let them do the resigning for you, if the Governors are so minded."

"You mean you would let them request my resignation?"

He nodded. "It will make you friends--assuredly it will lose you none. That is where a woman has the advantage over a man. A Club can kick a man out and no one ever questions its justice--but it is different with a woman. She is entitled to something more than mere justice--a certain courtesy and consideration must always be hers, together with a proper regard for her sex. Mere justice to a woman becomes injustice--and injustice always reacts on itself."

"You are considering the matter only as it affects me," Stephanie insisted, "while I'm concerned as to the way it affects my friends. What ought I do out of regard for _them_, is the question."

"Whatever is best for yourself," he answered. "They are friends, you know."

"But I don't know what is best--moreover, for myself I don't care a rap one way or the other. It is nothing to me to belong to their Club, or to chatter small talk and scandal, to lunch and dine and go to the horse-show, and fancy I'm having a glorious time. I'm not a debutante any longer. I've seen enough of life to know the shallows--and Society is the shallowest of them all."

"Yes you do care, Stephanie," he said. "You think that you don't, and all that, but everyone cares for them to a greater or less extent. It's only a matter of degree--life is made up of degrees, and social amenities, their obligations and duties are a part of life."

"I suppose you're right," she admitted, "but, just at present, mine are in an infinitesimal degree," and she crossed her knees and leaned back in content. "At this moment I haven't a care in the world."