Again his words were peculiarly suggestive, and again his tone was curiously frank. Why should he suggest that their conversation was unintelligible? And suggest it in so impersonal a tone? She leant back in her cushioned seat and let her eyelids droop. Her mind was full of puzzling and delightful thoughts. Never had she tasted the mystery of Venice as she tasted it to-night. Every pa.s.sing breath of wind, every scent blown from the dark and silent gardens, every distant laugh or broken word, was alive with unguessed meanings. The feverish excitement of the past week seemed to fall away. This was romance! This drifting with an inscrutable companion through an unfathomable night!
Her eyes closed; she lay almost motionless, filled with an aimless, vague delight. All creation--with all creation"s limitless possibilities--lay in the warm darkness that enveloped her. Then, with the instinct of senses newly and sharply astir, she became conscious that Gore was watching her. With a thrill of expectancy and antic.i.p.ation, she opened her eyes.
There is something very curious--something subtle and almost intimate--in the opening of one"s eyes upon the steady scrutiny of another. As Clodagh raised her lids, her glance encountered Gore"s; but on the instant that their eyes met, her joy in the moment--her exultant triumph--was suddenly killed. For the look that she surprised was not the look she had antic.i.p.ated. It was interested, it was attentive, it was grave, but it held neither subjugation nor pa.s.sion. As her brain woke to this realisation, she involuntarily raised herself in the cushioned seat.
At the same moment, her companion leant slightly forward.
"Mrs. Milbanke," he said quickly, "I have been watching you and thinking about you ever since I came to Venice. And at last I have decided, that I must tell you what my thoughts have been.
"I am not very old--perhaps I have no right to speak. But a man sees a good deal of life, even if he wants to keep his eyes shut; and I have seen a great many people throw away their chances--take the false and refuse the true. I have seen some men do it, and I have seen many women--many, many women." He paused, but did not look at her. "It is a common, everyday occurrence; so common that one generally looks on at it with indifference. But sometimes--just sometimes--one stops to think. One feels the great, great pity of it!"
He paused again, looking fixedly down at the strip of carpet beneath their feet.
Clodagh glanced at him--a swift, searching, almost surrept.i.tious look.
"There are times when one stops to think." He raised his head and looked at Clodagh, sitting erect and pale, her large eyes wide open, her hands clasped in her lap. "There are times when it seems cruel--when it seems a sacrilege to see a girl going down the easy road of lost illusions and callous sentiments. I know this sounds incomprehensible--sounds impertinent. But I cannot help myself. I must tell you what no one else will tell you. I must put out my hand."
He paused, but Clodagh did not speak.
"You are very young, you are very high-spirited, you--you are very attractive. And the world is full of people ready--waiting--to take advantage of your youth, your high spirits, your attractiveness. You are not fit for this society--for this set that you have drifted into----"
"This set? Isn"t it your own set?" At last Clodagh"s lips parted.
He made an impatient gesture.
"A man has many sets."
Her pale face flushed suddenly.
"I don"t think I understand," she said.
"No. But I am trying to make you understand. I am not disparaging Lady Frances Hope--or her social standing. She is a charming woman--a clever woman, but she is a woman of to-day. Her pleasures, her ambitions, her friends----"
Clodagh lifted her head.
"--Her friends?" she said faintly.
"--Are not the friends for you--for any inexperienced girl. Take them one by one. There is Serracauld--indolent, worthless, vicious; Barnard--decent enough as a man"s friend, and as honest as his clients permit him to be, but no proper guide for a girl like you; Deerehurst----"
But Clodagh checked him.
"Lord Deerehurst? What about Lord Deerehurst?" Her voice was high and strained.
Gore made a gesture of contempt.
"Deerehurst----" he began hotly; then suddenly his tone changed.
"Mrs. Milbanke," he said earnestly, "whatever you may say, whatever you may do, I cannot believe that in your heart you are in sympathy with these people, whose one object in life is to gamble--to gamble with honour, money, emotion--anything, everything that has the savour of risk and the possibility of gain.
"You have no justification for belonging to these people. You have the good things of life, the things many women are forced to steal--position, a home, a good husband----"
At the last word Clodagh started violently. And with a quick impulsive movement, Gore turned to her afresh.
"You are intoxicated with life--or what seems to you to be life! You are forgetting realities. I have seen your husband. He is an honest, simple, trustworthy man--who loves you."
The tone of his voice came to Clodagh with great distinctness. It seemed the only living thing in a world that had suddenly become dead.
While she had been sitting rigid and erect in the stern of the gondola, everything had altered to her mental vision--everything had undergone a fundamental change. The purple twilight; the mysterious night scents; the breezes blown in from the lagoon had become intangible, meaningless things. She was conscious of nothing but Gore"s clear words, of her own soul, stripped of its self-deception. At last, with a faint movement, she turned towards him.
"Take me home," she said in a numbed voice. "I wish to go home."
At the words, he wheeled round in sudden protest. But as his eyes rested on her cold face, a tinge of self-consciousness chilled his zeal--self-consciousness, and the suddenly remembered fact that his own action was, after all, unjustifiable. His own figure suddenly stiffened.
"As you wish, of course!" he said quietly. "I suppose my conduct seems quite unpardonable."
For one fleeting second an impulse--a desire--crossed Clodagh"s face; but as it trembled on the brink of utterance, Gore leant forward in his seat and gave a quick, imperative order to the gondolier. A moment later they had glided up a narrow waterway and emerged again upon the Grand Ca.n.a.l.
From the door and windows of Clodagh"s hotel, a stream of light was still pouring out upon the water. As they drew level with the terrace, she turned her face away from this searching radiance, and rose quickly to her feet.
"Good-night," she said in an almost inarticulate voice--"good-night!
Don"t stir! Don"t help me!"
But Gore had risen also. And in a sudden return of his earlier, more impulsive manner, he forgot the self-consciousness that had chilled him.
"Mrs. Milbanke----" he said quickly.
But Clodagh evaded his eyes; and with a sharp nervous movement, shook her head.
"No!" she said--"no! Don"t help me! I don"t want help!"
Stepping past him with an agile movement, she ran up the steps, and across the terrace to the door of the hotel.
Obeying a dominant impulse, Gore turned to follow her. But as his foot touched the side of the boat, he paused, drew slowly back, and dropped into his former seat.
With almost breathless haste, Clodagh ran up the silent staircase of the hotel, and entering her own room, turned on the light; then, walking straight to the dressing-table, she paused and stared into the mirror at her own reflection.
The sight of that reflection was not rea.s.suring. Her face looked colourless, as only olive-tinted skin can look; her wide eyes with their narrowed pupils seemed almost yellow in their intense clearness; while her whole air, her whole appearance, was frightened, tired, pained. As she looked, a nervous panic seized her, and she turned her gaze away.
With freedom to look elsewhere, her eyes roved over the dressing-table, and suddenly fixed themselves upon a large, square envelope bearing her name, which stood propped against a scent bottle.
In nervous haste she picked it up, and looked at it uncomprehendingly.
It was unusually large and thick and addressed in an unfamiliar hand.
With the same unstrung haste she turned it about between her fingers, halting with new apprehension, as she saw that its flap bore an elaborate black coronet and monogram.
At last, with a strange sense of apprehension, she tore the envelope open.
"CIRCE," the letter began.