Louise returned to London in a strange state of mind. In the first place, her family, who liked Eric, had not been disposed to listen sympathetically to her rather vague complaints. She had found her sister, an enthusiastic gardener, preoccupied and full of plans for altering the gardens of Mistley; her mother too engrossed with Theosophy to listen to earthly troubles, and her father too much upset over the budget. So she had been left to herself more than she had liked. She had made up her mind to stay until Eric expressed a desire for her return, but as he did no such thing, and she felt she couldn’t stand another hour of boredom, she returned to town.

And there was something else. The day before she left, a humble cousin of her mother’s came to tea. She had been to Paris for the first time in her life, and was not to be denied the greater joy of relating her impressions. The rest of the family, murmuring appropriate excuses, drifted away after tea, and Louise was left alone with the caller. It was then that Louise received a shock.

She heard that her husband had been seen in Paris. It came out quite naturally during the conversation. It also appeared that he had been seen at some private hotel with a lady. “I dare say—a relation?” The cousin’s voice had an inquiring note. “I dare say you’ll know who it was if I describe her. A tall lady, my friend said, not very young. Fair.” And Louise said, with her brain whirling, “Oh, yes, a cousin.“ The visitor nodded. “So odd, wasn’t it, my friend having seen your husband? One never expects to see any one one knows in Paris. It’s not like dear London.”

Louise was so amazed that she forgot to feel angry and outraged. She thought of it most of the night, and in the train next morning, and she thought of it—and it seemed stranger than ever then—when she was once more in her own home, among the familiar things she had lived with for eight years.

Eric was at the House. She couldn’t remember whether it was Divorce Reform or the Plumage Bill. Anyway, he wasn’t expected back till late. She longed for some one to talk to. She had no intimate woman friend with whom she could discuss her husband; in fact, she could think of no better ear in which to pour her troubled amazement than that of her husband’s mother.

Lady Gregory was in, Dawson said over the telephone, and was not expecting visitors. She would be delighted to see Mrs. Eric.

If Louise had been accustomed to self-examination, she would have realized that she was less unhappy than she had been for some years. She was indeed conscious of an odd satisfaction. Eric, then, was less perfect than his friends and family believed. There was a chink in that shining armor, his light had suddenly become dimmed. That woman in Paris—she was not young—it had evidently been going on for years. Or was it the renewal of some old affair? Her informant had managed to convey to her that her husband’s—“cousin did you say?”—had not looked—well—quite of their world. She was thankful for that. When Eric admired Lady Norah Thorpe-Taylor, or Mrs. Dennison, or that hideous, clever Madame Fonteyn, she resented it bitterly, for she knew they had what she had not—charm. So she scoffed at charm, and prided herself on having none, nor wishing to have.

But here was something different; here was a blemish in the fabric, a rotten spot brought for the first time to light. It put her on a new footing with him, a slightly elevated footing. Let him point, if he could, to anything unworthy in her life. She had always believed him to be fastidious. Well, he was not. But she was—perhaps she was too fastidious; but then she had the defects of her qualities. Let others touch pitch and be soiled. She could almost pity Eric for lacking what she had. After all, he was merely common clay, and she had been expected to prostrate herself before an idol. Ridiculous! She would try to forgive him. Perhaps he had found her difficult to live up to.

She grew greatly in her own eyes. She no longer felt herself dwarfed by him. He must understand that. Then she would forgive and forget—except at such times as it might suit her to remember.

* * * * * *

“My dear, how much better you look!” cried Madame Claire, as Louise came into the room. “You’re a different creature. Come and tell me all about it.”

As Dawson took her hat and coat, Louise made a mental note that it was time she had new ones. Later on, she might perhaps run over to Paris for a few days, and buy clothes there. Why not? “Do I really look better? I feel it. It’s been a delightful change, and of course one’s family do appreciate one. It’s like renewing one’s girlhood.”

“What an affected speech!” thought Madame Claire. “Louise has something on her mind.” She then said aloud:

“It amuses me to hear you talk about renewing your girlhood. How old are you? I’ve a dreadful memory for these things. Thirty-five? Ridiculously young. I always feel you don’t make the most of your youth and good looks.”

Louise gave a few touches to her hair before a mirror, and took a chair on the other side of the fireplace. There was something very restful about this room of Madame Claire’s. And her mother-in-law was a woman without prejudices, even where her own children were concerned. She felt she had done the right thing in coming to her.

“Would you be surprised to hear that I am going to turn over a new leaf? I feel I’ve been very much to blame. I’ve allowed myself to play third fiddle long enough.”

“Good!” said Madame Claire. “And what else?”

“And,” went on the younger woman, with a hint of defiance in her voice, “I’m not going to stand in awe of Eric any longer.”

“In awe—of Eric?” Madame Claire laughed. “My dear Louise, that you’ve certainly never done.”

“Well, it’s what I was always expected to do. I’ve thought a good deal about what you said the last time I was here. You were partly right. I suppose I have sulked. Well, I’m not going to sulk any more. Eric isn’t a demi-god. I know now there’s no earthly reason why I should look up to him, and admire him. He’s just like any other man.”

“But I could have told you that any time these last eight years!” cried Madame Claire, more puzzled than amused. “And besides, you yourself seem to have been well acquainted with his failings. I have sometimes thought you saw nothing else.”

“That’s because I was annoyed by his perfections.”

“Perfections! My dear, I could swear Eric has never been a prig!”

“Well, he never seemed to make mistakes like other people. And he always seemed to expect things of me that I wasn’t capable of. It got on my nerves.” “Naturally.”

“He always made me feel I was disappointing him. And that isn’t very pleasant. But now,” said Louise, coming to the crux of the matter, “he has disappointed me. So we are quits at last.”

“Ah,” said Madame Claire, still in the dark. “That must be a relief.”

“Oddly enough, it is a relief. Horrible as the whole thing is, I—I could almost be glad of it.”

“I was wrong,” thought Madame Claire, remembering a conversation she had had with Judy. “Eric is interested in some other woman, at last.”

“And what is this horrible thing?” she asked.

“You may as well hear it,” said Louise recklessly. “If I can bear it, I should think you could too. While I was away, Eric wired me he was going out of town for a few days. He didn’t say where. I know now. He was seen at a small hotel in Paris with a—a questionable-looking woman. So our idol has feet of clay.”

There was both bitterness and triumph in her voice. Madame Claire gripped the arms of her chair and tried not to laugh. What should she do? Good had been known to come out of evil. Should she and Eric let Louise think—what she thought? Her crying need was evidently to find Eric in the wrong. Should they let her?

“I won’t say it wasn’t a shock to me,” Louise went on. “It was. I heard it while I was at Mistley. I know that it is true.”

Madame Claire was thinking:

“She is bound to know the facts sooner or later, and then she’ll feel she has been made a fool of—a thing only saints can forgive. And yet, it’s an opportunity of a sort. But what a paltry business!”

“Suppose this were really true, Louise,” she said. “At the moment I am neither denying the possibility of it, nor affirming it. But suppose it were true. How would it affect your feeling for Eric?”

“As a good woman—and I hope I am that—it revolts me. But … perhaps I’ve been hard … perhaps he’s found a lack in me.… I dare say he has.… Oh!” she cried suddenly with real emotion, “I want to forgive him! I would forgive him.”

Madame Claire felt she was hearing something she had no right to hear. She must leave this to Eric. Stupid mistake as it was, it might be the means of clearing the air. She would have nothing to do with it.

“My dear,” she said, “I am going to forget you have told me this. Later you’ll understand why. I think the whole thing can be explained, but for your explanation I prefer you should go to Eric. It concerns him the most.”

She would hear no more of it. There was something indecent in Louise’s willingness to forgive. While they talked of other things her indignation grew. Eric’s wife wanted to believe the worst of him. By the time her visitor was ready to go, she found it difficult to be polite.

“I am delighted to see you looking so much better, and so much more cheerful,” she told her, as she said good-by. “And should there prove to be nothing in this story, don’t be disheartened. You mustn’t let one disappointment discourage you.”

Louise, wondering what she meant, kissed her mechanically.

“Good-by. I’ll come and see you again in a few days if I may.”

“Do. I shall expect really good news from you then.”

When the door had closed on her, Madame Claire sat looking into the fire with a flush on her cheeks. Presently she took from a bowl on the table beside her a few violets, and after wiping their stems, tucked them into her dress. “You deserve a bouquet,” she said to herself, “for not having been ruder. I expect they’re writing in their book up aloft, ‘January 30, Madame Claire rather less pleasant to-day to her irritating daughter-in-law.’ Well, let them.”

* * * * * *

Louise went home and dressed for dinner feeling like a warrior on the eve of battle. There had been many coldnesses in that house, but, as far back as she could remember, not a single contretemps. Dinner was at half-past eight, and there was a possibility that Eric would be late. They usually dined at eight, but the Plumage Bill—or was it the Divorce Reform Bill?—would keep him. She did her hair in a way that he had once admired, and put on a blue tea-gown that he had called charming. In fact, she took far greater pains over her rÔle as injured wife than she had ever taken before. And saw no humor in it either.

Eric thought he had never seen her look so well. Take away her coldness and her pettiness, he said to himself, and she would be lovely. Perhaps if she had married some one else she would have been neither cold nor petty. He often felt very sorry for her, for though he had made the mistake, she, no doubt, suffered the most. They talked commonplaces during dinner, but once they were alone in the library, Louise confronted him with heightened color and a voice she could barely control.

It was a pitiful little comedy. Her triumph was so short lived, and the bubble of her advantage over him so soon pricked. At the end of it she found refuge from her humiliation in tears. Eric had never seen her cry like that before, and it moved him. He felt like confessing to things he had never done, or abasing himself in some way. He understood her for the first time, and though there was something ignoble in it all, and he felt the prickings of anger, he nevertheless thought her very human, at least, in wanting to find some weakness to forgive him for.

He put his arm about her, half laughing.

“Look here, Louise, don’t be so cast down. There’s always the stage door—or I could forge a check to oblige, or elope with your maid. What would you like me to do?”

She made no answer, but buried her wet face in a cushion.

“Or why not just forgive me on general principles for being a stupid fellow, and not understanding you? I expect I often hurt you when I am least aware of it. We humans are like that—we understand each other’s sensibilities so little. Why not forgive me for that? Forgive me for not having known how to make you happier?”

“You are making fun of me,” she sobbed. “You are only sneering at me.”

Something told him that she was softening, that soon she would be talking with him like a reasonable being. Was it possible that from to-night he might feel he had a friend for a wife instead of an enemy? He knew he must not let pride stand in the way of it—nor justice even. There was nothing to be gained and much to be lost by telling her that during the whole of their married life she had persistently played the fool.

“On my honor I am not,” he said. “Louise, listen to me. I am a blundering fellow. Somehow or other I have always failed to give you what you wanted. That being so, I ask your help. Help me to be what you wish me to be. We are young, and there is still time. I will do anything. I beg you to help me.”

He made her raise her head, and looked her full in the face with all the intensity those blazing blue eyes of his were capable of.

“Will you help me?”

It was undoubtedly the great moment of Louise’s life. She knew it. Eric had made it possible for her to be magnanimous. But the gods were not kind. What she was going to say to him they alone knew, for at that instant the maid came to the door, to say that Countess Chiozzi was on the telephone and would like to speak to Mr. Gregory. For Louise the interruption was maddening. Eric was about to send word that he would ring her up in the morning, and so return as quickly as possible to the business in hand, when Louise said in a stifled voice:

“I want it clearly understood that that woman is not to come into this house.”

It was hopeless, then. Eric turned to the maid.

“I’ll speak to her,” he said, and left the room. They would have to separate. There was nothing else for it.

Louise sat with bent head, smoothing out a handkerchief on her knee. She had not meant to say that. The words had come through sheer force of habit. She knew her moment was gone now, and she believed that it would never come again. If Eric had really loved her, he would have seen that she longed to be different, and that under her coldness and bitterness there was only unhappiness and longing! He ought to have seen! She folded the handkerchief and pressed it to her eyes again. She was more miserable than ever.