But Maud bore up. "Doesn"t it depend again on what you call a relation?"
"Oh," said Mrs. Dyott, "if a gentleman picks up her pocket-handkerchief--"
"Ah even that"s one," their friend laughed, "if she has thrown it to him. We can only deal with one that is one."
"Surely," Maud replied. "But if it"s an innocent one--"
"Doesn"t it depend a good deal," Mrs. Dyott asked, "on what you call innocent?"
"You mean that the adventures of innocence have so often been the material of fiction? Yes," Voyt replied; "that"s exactly what the bored reader complains of. He has asked for bread and been given a stone. What is it but, with absolute directness, a question of interest or, as people say, of the story? What"s a situation undeveloped but a subject lost? If a relation stops, where"s the story? If it doesn"t stop, where"s the innocence? It seems to me you must choose. It would be very pretty if it were otherwise, but that"s how we flounder. Art is our flounderings shown."
Mrs. Blessingbourne--and with an air of deference scarce supported perhaps by its sketchiness--kept her deep eyes on this definition. "But sometimes we flounder out."
It immediately touched in Colonel Voyt the spring of a genial derision.
"That"s just where I expected YOU would! One always sees it come."
"He has, you notice," Mrs. Dyott parenthesised to Maud, "seen it come so often; and he has always waited for it and met it."
"Met it, dear lady, simply enough! It"s the old story, Mrs.
Blessingbourne. The relation"s innocent that the heroine gets out of.
The book"s innocent that"s the story of her getting out. But what the devil--in the name of innocence--was she doing IN?"
Mrs. Dyott promptly echoed the question. "You have to be in, you know, to GET out. So there you are already with your relation. It"s the end of your goodness."
"And the beginning," said Voyt, "of your play!"
"Aren"t they all, for that matter, even the worst," Mrs. Dyott pursued, "supposed SOME time or other to get out? But if meanwhile they"ve been in, however briefly, long enough to adorn a tale?"
"They"ve been in long enough to point a moral. That is to point ours!"
With which, and as if a sudden flush of warmer light had moved him, Colonel Voyt got up. The veil of the storm had parted over a great red sunset.
Mrs. Dyott also was on her feet, and they stood before his charming antagonist, who, with eyes lowered and a somewhat fixed smile, had not moved.
"We"ve spoiled her subject!" the elder lady sighed.
"Well," said Voyt, "it"s better to spoil an artist"s subject than to spoil his reputation. I mean," he explained to Maud with his indulgent manner, "his appearance of knowing what he has got hold of, for that, in the last resort, is his happiness."
She slowly rose at this, facing him with an aspect as handsomely mild as his own. "You can"t spoil my happiness."
He held her hand an instant as he took leave. "I wish I could add to it!"
CHAPTER III
When he had quitted them and Mrs. Dyott had candidly asked if her friend had found him rude or crude, Maud replied--though not immediately--that she had feared showing only too much how charming she found him. But if Mrs. Dyott took this it was to weigh the sense. "How could you show it too much?"
"Because I always feel that that"s my only way of showing anything. It"s absurd, if you like," Mrs. Blessingbourne pursued, "but I never know, in such intense discussions, what strange impression I may give."
Her companion looked amused. "Was it intense?"
"_I_ was," Maud frankly confessed.
"Then it"s a pity you were so wrong. Colonel Voyt, you know, is right."
Mrs. Blessingbourne at this gave one of the slow soft silent headshakes to which she often resorted and which, mostly accompanied by the light of cheer, had somehow, in spite of the small obstinacy that smiled in them, a special grace. With this grace, for a moment, her friend, looking her up and down, appeared impressed, yet not too much so to take the next minute a decision. "Oh my dear, I"m sorry to differ from any one so lovely--for you"re awfully beautiful to-night, and your frock"s the very nicest I"ve ever seen you wear. But he"s as right as he can be."
Maud repeated her motion. "Not so right, at all events as he thinks he is. Or perhaps I can say," she went on, after an instant, "that I"m not so wrong. I do know a little what I"m talking about."
Mrs. Dyott continued to study her. "You ARE vexed. You naturally don"t like it--such destruction."
"Destruction?"
"Of your illusion."
"I HAVE no illusion. If I had moreover it wouldn"t be destroyed. I have on the whole, I think, my little decency."
Mrs. Dyott stared. "Let us grant it for argument. What, then?"
"Well, I"ve also my little drama."
"An attachment?"
"An attachment."
"That you shouldn"t have?"
"That I shouldn"t have."
"A pa.s.sion?"
"A pa.s.sion."
"Shared?"
"Ah thank goodness, no!"
Mrs. Dyott continued to gaze. "The object"s unaware--?"
"Utterly."
Mrs. Dyott turned it over. "Are you sure?"
"Sure."
"That"s what you call your decency? But isn"t it," Mrs. Dyott asked, "rather his?"