AS Lady Holme had foreseen, the impertinent mimicry of Miss Schley concentrated a great deal of attention upon the woman mimicked. Many people, accepting the American’s cleverness as a fashionable fact, also accepted her imitation as the imitation of a fact more surreptitious, and credited Lady Holme with a secret leading towards the improper never before suspected by them. They remembered the break between the Holmes and Carey, the strange scene at the Arkell House ball, and began to whisper many things of Lady Holme, and to turn a tide of pity and of sympathy upon her husband. On this tide Lord Holme and the American might be said to float merrily like corks, unabashed in the eye of the sun. Their intimacy was condoned on all sides as a natural result of Lady Holme’s conduct. Most of that which had been accomplished by Lord and Lady Holme together after their reconciliation over the first breakfast was undone. The silent tongue began to wag, and to murmur the usual platitudes about the poor fellow who could not find sympathy at home and so was obliged, against his will, to seek for it outside.

All this Lady Holme had foreseen as she sat in her box at the British Theatre.

The wrong impression of her was enthroned. She had to reckon with it. This fact, fully recognised by her, made her wish to walk warily where otherwise her temper might have led her to walk heedlessly. She wanted to do an unusual thing, to draw her husband’s attention to an intimacy which was concealed from the world—the intimacy between herself and Leo Ulford.

After her visit to the house in Half Moon Street she began to see a great deal of Leo Ulford. Carey had been right when he said that they would get on together. She understood him easily and thoroughly, and for that very reason he was attracted by her. Men delight to feel that a woman is understanding them; women that no man can ever understand them. Under the subtle influence of Lady Holme’s complete comprehension of him, Leo Ulford’s nature expanded, stretched itself as his long legs stretched themselves when his mind was purring. There was not much in him to reveal, but what there was he revealed, and Lady Holme seemed to be profoundly interested in the contents of his soul.

But she was not interested in the contents of his soul in public places on which the world’s eye is fixed. She refused to allow Leo to do what he desired, and assumed an air of almost possessive friendship before Society. His natural inclination for the blatant was firmly checked by her. She cared nothing for him really, but her woman’s instinct had divined that he was the type of man most likely to rouse the slumbering passion of Fritz, if Fritz were led to suspect that she was attracted to him. Men like Lord Holme are most easily jealous of the men who most closely resemble them. Their conceit leads them to put an exaggerated value upon their own qualities in others, upon the resemblance to their own physique exhibited by others.

Leo Ulford was rather like a younger and coarser Lord Holme. In him Lady Holme recognised an effective weapon for the chastisement, if not for the eventual reclamation, of her husband. It was characteristic of her that this was the weapon she chose, the weapon she still continued to rely on even after her conversation with Robin Pierce. Her faith in white angels was very small. Perpetual contact with the world of to-day, with life as lived by women of her order, had created within her far other faiths, faiths in false gods, a natural inclination to bow the knee in the house of Rimmon rather than before the altars guarded by the Eternities.

And then—she knew Lord Holme; knew what attracted him, what stirred him, what moved him to excitement, what was likely to hold him. She felt sure that he and such men as he yield the homage they would refuse to the angel to the siren. Instead of seeking the angel within herself, therefore, she sought the siren. Instead of striving to develope that part of her which was spiritual, she fixed all her attention upon that part of her which was fleshly, which was physical. She neglected the flame and began to make pretty patterns with the ashes.

Robin came to bid her good-bye before leaving London for Rome. The weeping woman was gone. He looked into the hard, white face of a woman who smiled. They talked rather constrainedly for a few minutes. Then suddenly he said:

“Once it was a painted window, now it’s an iron shutter.”

He got up from his chair and clasped his hands together behind his back.

“What on earth do you mean?” she asked, still smiling.

“Your face,” he answered. “One could see you obscurely before. One can see nothing now.”

“You talk great nonsense, Robin. It’s a good thing you’re going back to Rome.”

“At least I shall find the spirit of beauty there,” he said, almost with bitterness. “Over here it is treated as if it were Jezebel. It’s trodden down. It’s thrown to the dogs.”

“Poor spirit!”

She laughed lightly.

“Do you understand what they’re saying of you?” he went on.

“Where?”

“All over London.”

“Perhaps.”

“But—do you?”

“Perhaps I don’t care to.”

“They’re saying—‘Poor thing! But it’s her own fault.’”

There was a silence. In it he looked at her hard, mercilessly. She returned his gaze, still smiling.

“And it is your own fault,” he went on after a moment. “If you had been yourself she couldn’t have insulted you first and humiliated you afterwards. Oh, how I hate it! And yet—yet there are moments when I am like the others, when I feel—‘She has deserved it.’”

“When will you be in Rome?” she said.

“And even now,” he continued, ignoring her remark, “even now, what are you doing? Oh, Viola, you’re a prey to the modern madness for crawling in the dirt instead of walking upright in the sun. You might be a goddess and you prefer to be an insect. Isn’t it mad of you? Isn’t it?”

He was really excited, really passionate. His face showed that. There was fire in his eyes. His lips worked convulsively when he was not speaking. And yet there was just a faint ring of the accomplished orator’s music in his voice, a music which suggests a listening ear—and that ear the orator’s own.

Perhaps she heard it. At any rate his passionate attack did not seem to move her.

“I prefer to be what I am,” was all she said.

“What you are! But you don’t know what you are.”

“And how can you pretend to know?” she asked. “Is a man more subtle about a woman than she is about herself?”

He did not answer for a moment. Then he said bluntly:

“Promise me one thing before I go away.”

“I don’t know. What is it?”

“Promise me not to—not to—”

He hesitated. The calm of her face seemed almost to confuse him.

“Well?” she said. “Go on.”

“Promise me not to justify anything people are saying, not to justify it with—with that fellow Ulford.”

“Good-bye,” she answered, holding out her hand.

He recognised that the time for his advice had gone by, if it had ever been.

“What a way—what a way for us to—” he almost stammered.

He recovered his self-possession with an effort and took her hand.

“At least,” he said in a low, quiet voice, “believe it is less jealousy that speaks within me than love—love for you, for the woman you are trampling in the dust.”

He looked into her eyes and went out. She did not see him again before he left England. And she was glad. She did not want to see him. Perhaps it was the first time in her life that the affection of a man whom she really liked was distasteful to her. It made her uneasy, doubtful of herself just then, to be loved as Robin loved her.

Carey had come back to town, but he went nowhere. He was in bad odour. Sir Donald Ulford was almost the only person he saw anything of at this time. It seemed that Sir Donald had taken a fancy to Carey. At any rate, such friendly feeling as he had did not seem lessened after Carey’s exhibition at Arkell House. When Carey returned to Stratton Street, Sir Donald paid him a visit and stayed some time. No allusion was made to the painful circumstances under which they had last seen each other until Sir Donald was on the point of going away. Then he said:

“You have not forgotten that I expect you at Casa Felice towards the end of August?”

Carey looked violently astonished.

“Still?” he said.

“Yes.”

Suddenly Carey shot out his hand and grasped Sir Donald’s.

“You aren’t afraid to have a drunken beast like me in Casa Felice! It’s a damned dangerous experiment.”

“I don’t think so.”

“It’s your own lookout, you know. I absolve you from the invitation.”

“I repeat it, then.”

“I accept it, then—again.”

Sir Donald went away thoughtfully. When he reached the Albany he found Mrs. Leo Ulford waiting for him in tears. They had a long interview.

Many people fancied that Sir Donald looked more ghostly, more faded even than usual as the season wore on. They said he was getting too old to go about so much as he did, and that it was a pity Society “got such a hold” on men who ought to have had enough of it long ago. One night he met Lady Holme at the Opera. She was in her box and he in the stalls. After the second act she called him to her with a gay little nod of invitation. Lady Cardington had been with her during the act, but left the box when the curtain fell to see some friends close by. When Sir Donald tapped at the door Lady Holme was quite alone. He came in quietly—even his walk was rather ghostly—and sat down beside her.

“You don’t look well,” she said after they had greeted each other.

“I am quite well,” he answered, with evident constraint.

“I haven’t seen you to speak to since that little note of yours.”

A very faint colour rose in his faded cheeks.

“After Miss Schley’s first night?” he murmured.

His yellow fingers moved restlessly.

“Do you know that your son told me you would write?” she continued.

She was leaning back in her chair, half hidden by the curtain of the box.

“Leo!”

Sir Donald’s voice was almost sharp and startling.

“How should he—you spoke about me then?”

There was a flash of light in his pale, almost colourless eyes.

“I wondered where you had gone, and he said you would write next day.”

“That was all?”

“Why, how suspicious you are!”

She spoke banteringly.

“Suspicious! No—but Leo does not understand me very well. I was rather old when he was born, and I have never been able to be much with him. He was educated in England, and my duties of course lay abroad.”

He paused, looking at her and moving his thin white moustache. Then, in an uneasy voice, he added:

“You must not take my character altogether from Leo.”

“Nor you mine altogether from Miss Schley,” said Lady Holme.

She scarcely knew why she said it. She thought herself stupid, ridiculous almost, for saying it. Yet she could not help speaking. Perhaps she relied on Sir Donald’s age. Or perhaps—but who knows why a woman is cautious or incautious in moments the least expected? God guides her, perhaps, or the devil—or merely a bottle imp. Men never know, and that is why they find her adorable.

Sir Donald said nothing for a moment, only made the familiar movement with his hands that was a sign in him of concealed excitement or emotion. His eyes were fixed upon the ledge of the box. Lady Holme was puzzled by his silence and, at last, was on the point of making a remark on some other subject—Plancon’s singing—when he spoke, like a man who had made up his mind firmly to take an unusual, perhaps a difficult course.

“I wish to take it from you,” he said. “Give me the right one, not an imitation of an imitation.”

She knew at once what he meant and was surprised. Had Leo Ulford been talking?

“Lady Holme,” he went on, “I am taking a liberty. I know that. It’s a thing I have never done before, knowingly. Don’t think me unconscious of what I am doing. But I am an old man, and old men can sometimes venture—allowance is sometimes made for them. I want to claim that allowance now for what I am going to say.”

“Well?” she said, neither hardly nor gently.

In truth she scarcely knew whether she wished him to speak or not.

“My son is—Leo is not a safe friend for you at this moment.”

Again the dull, brick-red flush rose in his cheeks. There was an odd, flattened look just above his cheekbones near his eyes, and the eyes themselves had a strange expression as of determination and guilt mingled.

“Your son?” Lady Holme said. “But—”

“I do not wish to assume anything, but I—well, my daughter-in-law sometimes comes to me.”

“Sometimes!” said Lady Holme.

“Leo is not a good husband,” Sir Donald said. “But that is not the point. He is also a bad—friend.”

“Why don’t you say lover?” she almost whispered.

He grasped his knee with one hand and moved the hand rapidly to and fro.

“I must say of him to you that where his pleasure or his vanity is concerned he is unscrupulous.”

“Why say all this to a woman?”

“You mean that you know as much as I?”

“Don’t you think it likely?”

“Henrietta—”

“Who is that?”

“My daughter-in-law has done everything for Leo—too much. She gets nothing—not even gratitude. I am sorry to say he has no sense of chivalry towards women. You know him, I daresay. But do you know him thwarted?”

“Ah, you don’t think so badly of me after all?” she said quickly.

“I—I think of you that—that—”

He stopped.

“I think that I could not bear to see the whiteness of your wings smirched by a child of mine.” he added.

“You too!” she said.

Suddenly tears started into her eyes.

“Another believer in the angel!” she thought.

“May I come in?”

It was Mr. Bry’s cold voice. His discontented, sleek face was peeping round the door.

Sir Donald got up to go.

As Lady Holme drove away from Covent Garden that night she was haunted by a feverish, embittering thought:

“Will everyone notice it but Fritz?”

Lord Holme indeed seemed scarcely the same man who had forbidden Carey to come any more to his house, who had been jealous of Robin Pierce, who had even once said that he almost wished his wife were an ugly woman. The Grand Turk nature within him, if not actually dead, was certainly in abeyance. He was so intent on his own affairs that he paid no heed at all to his wife’s, even when they might be said to be also his. Leo Ulford was becoming difficult to manage, and Lord Holme still gaily went his way. As Lady Holme thought over Sir Donald’s words she felt a crushing weight of depression sink down upon her. The brougham rolled smoothly on through the lighted streets. She did not glance out of the windows, or notice the passing crowds. In the silence and darkness of her own soul she was trying not to feel, trying to think.

A longing to be incautious, to do something startling, desperate, came to her.

It was evident that Mrs. Ulford had been complaining to Sir Donald about his son’s conduct. With whom? Lady Holme could not doubt that it was with herself. She had read, with one glance at the fluttering pink eyelids, the story of the Leo Ulford’s menage. Now, she was not preoccupied with any regret for her own cruelty or for another woman’s misery. The egoism spoken of by Carey was not dead in her yet, but very much alive. As she sat in the corner of the brougham, pressing herself against the padded wall, she was angry for herself, pitiful for herself. And she was jealous—horribly jealous. That woke up her imagination, all the intensity of her. Where was Fritz to-night? She did not know. Suddenly the dense ignorance in which every human being lives, and must live to the end of time, towered above her like a figure in a nightmare. What do we know, what can we ever know of each other? In each human being dwells the most terrible, the most ruthless power that exists—the power of silence.

Fritz had that power; stupid, blundering, self-contented Fritz.

She pulled the check-string and gave the order, “Home!”

In her present condition she felt unable to go into Society.

When she got to Cadogan Square she said to the footman who opened the door:

“His lordship isn’t in yet?”

“No, my lady.”

“Did he say what time he would be in to-night?”

“No, my lady.”

The man paused, then added:

“His lordship told Mr. Lucas not to wait up.”

“Mr. Lucas” was Lord Holme’s valet.

It seemed to Lady Holme as if there were a significant, even a slightly mocking, sound in the footman’s voice. She stared at him. He was a thin, swarthy young man, with lantern jaws and a very long, pale chin. When she looked at him he dropped his eyes.

“Bring me some lemonade to the drawing-room in ten minutes,” she said.

“Yes, my lady.”

“In ten minutes, not before. Turn on all the lights in the drawing-room.”

“Yes, my lady.”

The man went before her up the staircase, turned on the lights, stood aside to let her pass and then went softly down. Lady Holme rang for Josephine.

“Take my cloak and then go to bed,” she said.

Josephine took the cloak and went out, shutting the door.

“Ten minutes!” Lady Holme said to herself.

She sat down on the sofa on which she had sat for a moment alone after her song at the dinner-party, the song murdered by Miss Filberte. The empty, brilliantly-lit rooms seemed unusually large. She glanced round them with inward-looking eyes. Here she was at midnight sitting quite alone in her own house. And she wished to do something decisive, startling as the cannon shot sometimes fired from a ship to disperse a fog wreath. That was the reason why she had told the footman to come in ten minutes. She thought that in ten minutes she might make up her mind. If she decided upon doing something that required an emissary the man would be there.

She looked at the little silver box she had taken up that night when she was angry, then at the grand piano in the further room. The two things suggested to her two women—the woman of hot temper and the woman of sweetness and romance. What was she to-night, and what was she going to do? Nothing, probably. What could she do? Again she glanced round the rooms. It seemed to her that she was like an actress in an intense, passionate role, who is paralysed by what is called in the theatre “a stage wait.” She ought to play a tremendous scene, now, at once, but the person with whom she was to play it did not come on to the stage. She had worked herself up for the scene. The emotion, the passion, the force, the fury were alive, were red hot within her, and she could not set them free. She remained alone upon the stage in a sort of horror of dumbness, a horror of inaction.

The footman came in quietly with the lemonade on a tray. He put it down on a table by Lady Holme.

“Is there anything else, my lady?”

She supposed that the question was meant as a very discreet hint to her that the man would be glad to go to bed. For a moment she did not reply, but kept him waiting. She was thinking rapidly, considering whether she would do the desperate thing or not, whether she would summon one of the actors for the violent scene her nature demanded persistently that night.

After the opera she had been due at a ball to which Leo Ulford was going. She had promised to go in to supper with him and to arrive by a certain hour. He was wondering, waiting, now, at this moment. She knew that. The house was in Eaton Square, not far off. Should she send the footman with a note to Leo, saying that she was too tired to come to the ball but that she was sitting up at home? That was what she was rapidly considering while the footman stood waiting. Leo would come, and then—presently—Lord Holme would come. And then? Then doubtless would happen the scene she longed for, longed for with a sort of almost crazy desire such as she had never felt before.

She glanced up and saw an astonished expression upon the footman’s pale face. How long had she kept him there waiting? She had no idea.

“There is nothing else,” she said slowly.

She paused, then added, reluctantly:

“You can go to bed.”

The man went softly out of the room. As he shut the door she breathed a deep sigh, that was almost a sob. So difficult had she found it to govern herself, not to do the crazy thing.

She poured out the lemonade and put ice into it.

As she did so she made grimaces, absurd grimaces of pain and misery, like those on the faces of the two women in Mantegna’s picture of Christ and the Marys in the Brera at Milan. They are grotesque, yet wonderfully moving in their pitiless realism. But tears fall from the eyes of Mantegna’s women and no tears fell from Lady Holme’s eyes. Still making grimaces, she sipped the lemonade. Then she put down the glass, leaned back on the sofa and shut her eyes. Her face ceased to move, and became beautiful again in its stillness. She remained motionless for a long time, trying to obtain the mastery over herself. In act she had obtained it already, but not in emotion. Indeed, the relinquishing of violence, the sending of the footman to bed, seemed to have increased the passion within her. And now she felt it rising till she was afraid of being herself, afraid of being this solitary woman, feeling intensely and able to do nothing. It seemed to her as if such a passion of jealousy, and desire for immediate expression of it in action, as flamed within her, must wreak disaster upon her like some fell disease, as if she were in immediate danger, even in immediate physical danger. She lay still like one determined to meet it bravely, without flinching, without a sign of cowardice.

But suddenly she felt that she had made a mistake in dismissing the footman, that the pain of inaction was too great for her to bear. She could not just—do nothing. She could not, and she got up swiftly and rang the bell. The man did not return. She pressed the bell again. After three or four minutes he came in, looking rather flushed and put out.

“I want you to take a note to Eaton Square,” she said. “It will be ready in five minutes.”

“Yes, my lady.”

She went to her writing table and wrote this note to Leo Ulford:

After writing this note Lady Holme hesitated for a moment, then she went to a writing table, opened a drawer and took out a tiny, flat key. She enclosed it in two sheets of thick note paper, folded the note also round it, and put it into an envelope which she carefully closed. After writing Leo Ulford’s name on the envelope she rang again for the footman.

“Take this to Eaton Square,” she said, naming the number of the house. “And give it to Mr. Ulford yourself. Go in a hansom. When you have given Mr. Ulford the note come straight back in the hansom and let me know. After that you can go to bed. Do you understand?”

“Yes, my lady.”

The man went out.

Lady Holme stood up to give him the note. She remained standing after he had gone. An extraordinary sensation of relief had come to her. Action had lessened her pain, had removed much of the pressure of emotion upon her heart. For a moment she felt almost happy.

She sat down again and took up a book. It was a book of poems written by a very young girl whom she knew. There was a great deal about sorrow in the poems, and sorrow was always alluded to as a person; now flitting through a forest in the autumn among the dying leaves, now bending over a bed, now walking by the sea at sunset watching departing ships, now standing near the altar at a wedding. The poems were not good. On the other hand, they were not very bad.

They had some grace, some delicacy here and there, now and then a touch of real, if by no means exquisite, sentiment. At this moment Lady Holme found them soothing. There was a certain music in them and very little reality. They seemed to represent life as a pensive phantasmagoria of bird songs, fading flowers, dying lights, soft winds and rains and sighing echoes.

She read on and on. Sometimes a hard thought intruded itself upon her mind—the thought of Leo Ulford with the latch-key of her husband’s house in his hand. That thought made the poems seem to her remarkably unlike life.

She looked at the clock. The footman had been away long enough to do his errand. Just as she was thinking this he came into the room.

“Well?” she said.

“I gave Mr. Ulford the note, my lady.”

“Then you can go to bed. Good-night. I’ll put out the lights here.”

“Thank you, my lady.”

As he went away she turned again to the poems; but now she could not read them. Her eyes rested upon them, but her mind took in nothing of their meaning. Presently—very soon—she laid the book down and sat listening. The footman had shut the drawing-room door. She got up and opened it. She wanted to hear the sound of the latch-key being put into the front door by Leo Ulford. It seemed to her as if that sound would be like the leit motif of her determination to govern, to take her own way, to strike a blow against the selfish egoism of men. After opening the door she sat down close to it and waited, listening.

Some minutes passed. Then she heard—not the key put into the hall door; it had not occurred to her that she was much too far away to hear that—but the bang of the door being shut.

Quickly she closed the drawing-room door, went back to the distant sofa, sat down upon it and began to turn over the poems once more. She even read one quite carefully. As she finished it the door was opened.

She looked up gaily to greet Leo and saw her husband coming into the room.

She was greatly startled. It had never occurred to her that Fritz was quite as likely to arrive before Leo Ulford as Leo Ulford to arrive before Fritz. Why had she never thought of so obvious a possibility? She could not imagine. The difference between the actuality and her intense and angry conception of what it would be, benumbed her mind for an instant. She was completely confused. She sat still with the book of poems on her lap, and gazed at Lord Holme as he came towards her, taking long steps and straddling his legs as if he imagined he had a horse under him. The gay expression had abruptly died away from her face and she looked almost stupid.

“Hulloa!” said Lord Holme, as he saw her.

She said nothing.

“Thought you were goin’ to the Blaxtons to-night,” he added.

She made a strong effort and smiled.

“I meant to, but I felt tired after the opera.”

“Why don’t you toddle off to bed then?”

“I feel tired, I don’t feel sleepy.”

Lord Holme stared at her, put his hand into his trousers pocket and pulled out his cigarette-case. Lady Holme knew that he had been in a good humour when he came home, and that the sight of her sitting up in the drawing-room had displeased him. She had seen a change come into his face. He had been looking gay. He began to look glum and turned his eyes away from her.

“What have you been up to?” she asked, with a sudden light gaiety and air of comradeship.

“Club—playin’ bridge,” he answered, lighting a cigarette.

He shot a glance at her sideways as he spoke, a glance that was meant to be crafty. If she had not been excited and horribly jealous, such a glance would probably have amused her, even made her laugh. Fritz’s craft was very transparent. But she could not laugh now. She knew he was telling her the first lie that had occurred to him.

“Lucky?” she asked, still preserving her light and casual manner.

“Middlin’,” he jerked out.

He sat down in an armchair and slowly stretched his legs, staring up at the ceiling. Lady Holme began to think rapidly, feverishly.

Had he locked the front door when he came in? Very much depended upon whether he had or had not. The servants had all gone to bed. Not one of them would see that the house was closed for the night. Fritz was a very casual person. He often forgot to do things he had promised to do, things that ought to be done. On the other hand, there were moments when his memory was excellent. If she only knew which mood had been his to-night she thought she would feel calmer. The uncertainty in which she was made mind and body tingle. If Fritz had remembered to lock the door, Leo Ulford would try to get in, fail, and go away. But if he had not remembered, at any moment Leo Ulford might walk into the room triumphantly with the latch-key in his hand. And it was nearly half-past twelve.

She wished intensely that she knew what Fritz had done.

“What’s up?” he said abruptly.

“Up?” she said with an uncontrollable start.

“Yes, with you?”

“Nothing. What d’you mean?”

“Why, you looked as if—don’t you b’lieve I’ve been playin’ bridge?”

“Of course I do. Really, Fritz, how absurd you are!”

It was evident that he, too, was not quite easy to-night. If he had a conscience, surely it was pricking him. Fierce anger flamed up again suddenly in Lady Holme, and the longing to lash her husband. Yet even this anger did not take away the anxiety that beset her, the wish that she had not done the crazy thing. The fact of her husband’s return before Leo’s arrival seemed to have altered her action, made it far more damning. To have been found with Leo would have been compromising, would have roused Fritz’s anger. She wanted to rouse his anger. She had meant to rouse it. But when she looked at Fritz she did not like the thought of Leo walking in at this hour holding the latch-key in his hand. What had Fritz done that night to Rupert Carey? What would he do to-night if—?

“What the deuce is up with you?”

Lord Holme drew in his legs, sat up and stared with a sort of uneasy inquiry which he tried to make hard. She laughed quickly, nervously.

“I’m tired, I tell you. It was awfully hot at the opera.”

She put some more ice into the lemonade, and added:

“By the way, Fritz, I suppose you locked up all right?”

“Locked up what?”

“The front door. All the servants have gone to bed, you know.”

No sooner had she spoken the last words than she regretted them. If Leo did get in they took away all excuse. She might have pretended he had been let in. He would have had to back her up. It would have been mean of her, of course. Still, seeing her husband there, Leo would have understood, would have forgiven her. Women are always forgiven such subterfuges in unfortunate moments. What a fool she was to-night!

“That don’t matter,” said her husband, shortly.

“But—but it does. You know how many burglaries there are. Why, only the other night Mrs. Arthur came home from a ball and met two men on the stairs.”

“I pity any men I found on my stairs,” he returned composedly, touching the muscle of his left arm with his right hand.

He chuckled.

“They’d be sorry for themselves, I’ll bet,” he added.

He put down his cigarette and took out another slowly, leisurely. Lady Holme longed to strike him. His conceited composure added fuel to the flame of her anxiety.

“Well, anyhow, I don’t care to run these risks in a place like London, Fritz,” she said almost angrily. “Have you locked up or not?”

“Damned if I remember,” he drawled.

She did not know whether he was deliberately trying to irritate her or whether he really had forgotten, but she felt it impossible to remain any longer in uncertainty.

“Very well, then, I shall go down and see,” she said.

And she laid the book of poems on a table and prepared to get up from the sofa.

“Rot!” said Lord Holme; “if you’re nervous, I’ll go.”

She leaned back.

“Very well.”

“In a minute.”

He struck a match and let it out.

“Do go now, there’s a good dog,” she said coaxingly.

He struck another match and held it head downwards.

“You needn’t hurry a feller.”

He tapped his cigarette gently on his knee, and applied the flame to it.

“That’s better.”

Lady Holme moved violently on the sofa. She had a pricking sensation all over her body, and her face felt suddenly very hot, as if she had fever. A ridiculous, but painful idea started up suddenly in her mind. Could Fritz suspect anything? Was he playing with her? She dismissed it at once as the distorted child of a guilty conscience. Fritz was not that sort of man. He might be a brute sometimes, but he was never a subtle brute. He blew two thin lines of smoke out through his nostrils, now with a sort of sensuous, almost languid, deliberation, and watched them fade away in the brilliantly-lit room. Lady Holme resolved to adopt another manner, more in accord with her condition of tense nervousness.

“When I ask you to do a thing, Fritz, you might have the decency to do it,” she said sharply. “You’re forgetting what’s due to me—to any woman.”

“Don’t fuss at this time of night.”

“I want to go to bed, but I’m not going till I know the house is properly shut up. Please go at once and see.”

“I never knew you were such a coward,” he rejoined without stirring. “Who was at the opera?”

“I won’t talk to you till you do what I ask.”

“That’s a staggerin’ blow.”

She sprang up with an exclamation of anger. Her nerves were on edge and she felt inclined to scream out.

“I never thought you could be so—such a cad to a woman, Fritz,” she said.

She moved towards the door. As she did so she heard a cab in the square outside, a rattle of wheels, then silence. It had stopped. Her heart seemed to stand still too. She knew now that she was a coward, though not in the way Fritz meant. She was a coward with regard to him. Her jealousy had prompted her to do a mad thing. In doing it she had actually meant to produce a violent scene. It had seemed to her that such a scene would relieve the tension of her nerves, of her heart, would clear the air. But now that the scene seemed imminent—if Fritz had forgotten, and she was certain he had forgotten, to lock the door—she felt heart and nerves were failing her. She felt that she had risked too much, far too much. With almost incredible swiftness she remembered her imprudence in speaking to Carey at Arkell House and how it had only served to put a weapon into her husband’s hand, a weapon he had not scrupled to use in his selfish way to further his own pleasure and her distress. That stupid failure had not sufficiently warned her, and now she was on the edge of some greater disaster. She was positive that Leo Ulford was in the cab which had just stopped, and it was too late now to prevent him from entering the house. Lord Holme had got up from his chair and stood facing her. He looked quite pleasant. She thought of the change that would come into his face in a moment and turned cold.

“Don’t cut up so deuced rough,” he said; “I’ll go and lock up.”

So he had forgotten. He took a step towards the drawing-room door. But now she felt that at all costs she must prevent him from going downstairs, must gain a moment somehow. Suddenly she swayed slightly.

“I feel—awfully faint,” she said.

She went feebly, but quickly, to the window which looked on to the Square, drew away the curtain, opened the window and leaned out. The cab had stopped before their door, and she saw Leo Ulford standing on the pavement with his back to the house. He was feeling in his pocket, evidently for some money to give to the cabman. If she could only attract his attention somehow and send him away! She glanced back. Fritz was coming towards her with a look of surprise on his face.

“Leave me alone,” she said unevenly. “I only want some air.”

“But—”

“Leave me—oh, do leave me alone!”

He stopped, but stood staring at her in blank amazement. She dared not do anything. Leo Ulford stretched out his arm towards the cabman, who bent down from his perch. He took the money, looked at it, then bent down again, showing it to Leo and muttering something. Doubtless he was saying that it was not enough. She turned round again sharply to Fritz.

“Fritz,” she said, “be a good dog. Go upstairs to my room and fetch me some eau de Cologne, will you?”

“But—”

“It’s on my dressing-table—the gold bottle on the right. You know. I feel so bad. I’ll stay here. The air will bring me round perhaps.”

She caught hold of the curtain, like a person on the point of swooning.

“All right,” he said, and he went out of the room.

She watched till he was gone, then darted to the window and leaned out.

She was too late. The cab was driving off and Leo was gone. He must have entered the house.