XXXVI

Toward nine o'clock on the following morning John rose from a fitful sleep and looked around him. Even before he could recall the events of the preceding night he felt that there was a weight pressing upon his brain, a miserable sense of emptiness in life, a dull feeling of bewilderment. Although he had no clear recollection of getting there, he realized that he was in his own sitting room, and that he had been asleep upon the couch. He saw, too, that it was morning, for a ray of sunlight lay across the carpet.

As he struggled to his feet, he saw with a little shock that he was not alone. Sophy Gerard was curled up in his easy chair, still in evening clothes, her cloak drawn closely around her, as if she were cold. Her head had fallen back. She, too, was asleep. At the sound of his movement, however, she opened her eyes and looked at him for a moment with a puzzled stare. Then she jumped to her feet.

"Why, we have both been asleep!" she murmured, a little weakly.

At the sound of her voice it all came back to him, a tangled, hideous nightmare. He sat down again upon the couch and held his head between his hands.

"How did I come here?" he asked. "I can't remember!"

She hesitated. He answered the unspoken question in her eyes.

"I remember everything that happened at the club," he went on slowly. "Is the prince dead?"

She shook her head.

"Of course not! He was hurt, though, and there was a terrible scene of confusion in the room. The people crowded around him, and I managed, somehow, to drag you away. The manager helped us. To tell the truth, he was only too anxious for you to get away before the police arrived. He was so afraid of anything getting into the papers. I drove you back here, and, as you still seemed stunned, I brought you up-stairs. I didn't mean to stay, but I couldn't get you to say a single coherent word. I was afraid to leave you alone!"

"I suppose I was drunk," he said, in a dull tone. "I remember filling my glass over and over again. There is one thing, though," he added, his voice gaining a sudden strength; "I was not drunk when I struck the prince! I remember those few seconds very distinctly. I saw everything, knew everything, felt everything. If no one had interfered, I think I should have killed him!"

"You were not drunk at all," she declared, with a little shiver, "but you were in a state of terrible excitement. It was a long time before I could get you to lie down, and then you wouldn't close your eyes until I came and sat by your side. I watched you go to sleep. I hope you are not angry with me! I didn't like to go and leave you."

"How could I be angry?" he protested. "You are far kinder to me than I deserve. I expect I should have been in a police cell but for you!"

"And now," she begged, coming over to him and speaking in a more matter-of-fact tone, "do let us be practical. I must run away, and you must go and have a bath and change your clothes. Don't be afraid of your reputation. I can get out by the other entrance."

He made no movement. She laid her hand on his arm. In the sunlight, with a little patch of rouge still left on her cheek, with her disordered hair and tired eyes, she looked almost ghastly.

"Remember," she whispered, "you have to go to see Louise!"

He covered his face with his hands.

"What's the use of it?" he groaned. "It's only another turn of the screw!"

"Don't be foolish, John," she admonished briskly. "You don't actually know anything yet—nothing at all; at least, you are not sure of anything. And besides, you strange, impossible person," she went on, patting his hand, "don't you see that you must judge her, not by the standards of your world, in which she has never lived, but by the standards of her world, in which she was born and bred? That is only fair, isn't it?"

He made no answer. She watched him anxiously, but there was no sign in his face.

"Pull yourself together, John," she continued. "Ring for some tea, get your bath, and then have it out with Louise. Remember, life is a very big thing. You are dealing this morning with all it may mean to you."

He rose listlessly to his feet. There was a strange, dull look in his face.

"You are a dear girl, Sophy!" he said. "Don't go just yet. I have never felt like it before in my life, but just now I don't want to be left alone. Send a boy for some clothes, and I will order some tea."

She hesitated.

"My own reputation," she murmured, "is absolutely of no consequence, but remember that you live here, and—"

"Don't be silly!" he interrupted. "What does that matter? And besides, according to you and all the rest of you here, these things don't affect a man's reputation—they are expected of him. See, I have rung the bell for breakfast. Now I am going to telephone down for a messenger-boy to go for your clothes."

They breakfasted together, a little later, and she made him smoke. He stood before the window, looking down upon the river, with his pipe in his mouth and an unfamiliar look upon his face.

"Do you suppose that Louise knows anything?" he asked at length.

"I should think not," she replied. "It is for you to tell her. I rang up the prince's house while you were in your bathroom. They say that he has a broken rib and some bad cuts, sustained in a motor accident last night, but that he is in no danger. There was nothing about the affair in the newspapers, and the prince's servants have evidently been instructed to give this account to inquirers."

A gleam of interest shone in John's face.

"By the bye," he remarked, "the prince is a Frenchman. He will very likely expect me to fight with him."

"No hope of that, my belligerent friend," Sophy declared, with an attempt at a smile. "The prince knows that he is in England. He would not be guilty of such an anachronism. Besides, he is a person of wonderfully well-balanced mind. When he is himself again, he will realize that what happened to him is exactly what he asked for."

John took up his hat and gloves. He glanced at the clock—it was a little past eleven.

"I am ready," he announced. "Let me drive you home first."

His motor was waiting at the door, and he left Sophy at her rooms. Before she got out, she held his arm for a moment.

"John," she said, "remember that Louise is very high-strung and very sensitive. Be careful!"

"There is only one thing to do or to say," he answered. "There is only one way in which I can do it."

He drove the car down Piccadilly like a man in a dream, steering as carefully as usual through the traffic, and glancing every now and then with unseeing eyes at the streams of people upon the pavements. Finally he came to a standstill before Louise's house and stopped the engine with deliberate care. Then he rang the bell, and was shown into her little drawing-room, which seemed to have become a perfect bower of pink and white lilac.

He sat waiting as if in a dream, unable to decide upon his words, unable even to sift his thoughts. The one purpose with which he had come, the one question he designed to ask, was burning in his brain. The minutes of her absence seemed tragically long. He walked up and down, oppressed by the perfume of the flowers. The room seemed too small for him. He longed to throw open all the windows, to escape from the atmosphere, in which for the first time he seemed to find some faint, enervating poison.

Then at last the door opened and Louise entered. She came toward him with a little welcoming smile upon her lips. Her manner was gay, almost affectionate.

"Have you come to take me for a ride before lunch?" she asked. "Do you know, I think that I should really like it! We might lunch at Ranelagh on our way home."

The words stuck in his throat. From where she was, she saw now the writing on his face. She stopped short.

"What is it?" she exclaimed.

"Ever since I knew you," he said slowly, "there have been odd moments when I have lived in torture. During the last fortnight, those moments have become hours. Last night the end came."

"Are you mad, John?" she demanded.

"Perhaps," he replied. "Listen. When I left you last night, I went to the club in Adelphi Terrace. There was a well-known critic there, comparing you and Latrobe. On the whole he favored you, but he gave Latrobe the first place in certain parts. Latrobe, he said, had had more experience of life. She had had a dozen lovers—you, only one!"

She winced. The glad freshness seemed suddenly to fade from her face. Her eyes became strained.

"Well?"

"I found Graillot. I cornered him. I asked him for the truth about you. He put me off with an evasion. I came down here and looked at your window. It was three o'clock in the morning. I dared not come in. A very demon of unrest was in my blood. I stopped at a night-club on my way back. Sophy was there. I asked her plainly to put me out of my agony. She was like Graillot. She fenced with me. And then—the prince came!"

"The prince was there?" she faltered.

"He came up to the table where Sophy and I were sitting. I think I was half mad. I poured him a glass of wine and asked him to drink with me. I told him that you had promised to become my wife. He raised his glass—I can see him now. He told me, with a smile, that it was the anniversary of the day on which you had promised to become his mistress!"

Louise shrank back.

"He told you that?"

John was on his feet. The fever was blazing once more.

"He told me that, face to face—told me that it was the anniversary of the day on which you had consented to become his mistress!"

"And you?"

"If we had been alone," John answered simply, "I should have killed him. I drove the words down his throat. I threw him back to the place he had left, and hurt him rather badly, I'm afraid. Sophy took me home somehow, and now I am here."

She leaned a little forward on the couch. She looked into his face searchingly, anxiously, as if seeking for something she could not find. His lips were set in hard, cold lines. The likeness to Stephen had never been more apparent.

"Listen!" she said. "You are a Puritan. While I admire the splendid self-restraint evolved from your creed, it is partly temperamental, isn't it? I was brought up to see things differently, and I do see them differently. Tell me, do you love me?"

The veins swelled for a moment upon his forehead, stood out like whip-cord along the back of his hands, but of softening there was no sign in his face.

"Love you?" he repeated. "You know it! Could I suffer the tortures of the damned if I didn't? Could I come to you with a man's blood upon my hands if I didn't? If the prince lives, it is simply the accident of fate. I tell you that if we had been alone I should have driven the breath out of his body. Love you!"

She rose slowly to her feet. She leaned with her elbow upon the mantelpiece, and her face was hidden for a moment.

"Let me think!" she said. "I don't know what to say to you. I don't know you, John. There isn't anything left of the John I loved. Let me look again!"

She swung around.

"You speak of love," she went on suddenly. "Do you know what it is? Do you know that loves reaches to the heavens, and can also touch the nethermost depths of hell? If I throw myself on my knees before you now, if I link my fingers around your neck, if I whisper to you that in the days that were past before you came I had done things I would fain forget, if I told you that from henceforth every second of my life was yours, that my heart beat with yours by day and by night, that I had no other thought, no other dream, than to stay by your side, to see you happy, to give all there was of myself into your keeping, to keep it holy and sacred for you—John, what then?"

Never a line in his face softened. He looked at her a moment as he had looked at the woman in Piccadilly, into whose hand he had dropped gold.

"Are you going to tell me that it is the truth?" he asked hoarsely.

She stood quite still, her bosom rising and falling. Even then she made one last effort. She held out her hands with a little trembling gesture, her eyes filled with tears.

"Think for a single moment of that feeling which you call love, John!" she pleaded. "Listen! I love you. It has come to me at last, after all these years. It lives in my heart, a greater thing than my ambition, a greater thing than my success, a greater thing than life itself. I love you, John. Can't you feel, don't you know, that nothing else in life can matter?"

Not a line in his face softened. His teeth had come together. He was like a man upon the rack.

"It is true? It is true, then?" he demanded.

She looked at him without any reply. The seconds seemed drawn out to an interminable period. He heard the rolling of the motor-buses in the street. Once more the perfume of the lilacs seemed to choke him. Then she leaned back and touched the bell.

"The prince spoke the truth," she said. "I think you had better go!"