"Fifty-seven Boulevard Montparna.s.se," he said.
He could still feel Lady St. Craye"s wet cheek against his own. The despairing pa.s.sion of her last kisses had thrilled him through and through.
He wanted to efface the mark of those kisses. He would not be haunted all night by any lips but Betty"s.
He had never called at her rooms in the evening. He had been careful for her in that. Even now as he rang the bell he was careful, and when the latch clicked and the door was opened a cautious inch he was ready, as he entered, to call out, in pa.s.sing the concierge"s door not Miss Desmond"s name, but the name of the Canadian artist who occupied the studio on the top floor.
He went softly up the stairs and stood listening outside Betty"s door.
Then he knocked gently. No one answered. Nothing stirred inside.
"She may be out," he told himself. "I"ll wait a bit."
At the same time he tapped again; and this time beyond the door something did stir.
Then came Betty"s voice:
"_Qui est la_?"
"It"s me--Vernon. May I come in?"
A moment"s pause. Then:
"No. You can"t possibly. Is anything the matter?"
"No--oh, no, but I wanted so much to see you. May I come to-morrow early?"
"You"re sure there"s nothing wrong? At home or anything? You haven"t come to break anything to me?"
"No--no; it"s only something I wanted to tell you."
He began to feel a fool, with his guarded whispers through a locked door.
"Then come at twelve," said Betty in the tones of finality.
"Good-night."
He heard an inner door close, and went slowly away. He walked a long way that night. It was not till he was back in his rooms and had lighted his candle and wound up his watch that Lady St. Craye"s kisses began to haunt him in good earnest, as he had known they would.
Lady St. Craye, left alone, dried her eyes and set to work, with heart still beating wildly to look about her at the ruins of her world.
The room was quiet with the horrible quiet of a death chamber. And yet his voice still echoed in it. Only a moment ago she had been in his arms, as she had never hoped to be again--more--as she had never been before.
"He would have loved me now," she told herself, "if it hadn"t been for that girl. He didn"t love me before. He was only playing at love. He didn"t know what love was. But he knows now. And it"s all too late!"
But was it?
A word to Betty--and--
"But you promised to help him."
"That was before he kissed me."
"But a promise is a promise."
"Yes,--and your life"s your life. You"ll never have another."
She stood still, her hands hanging by her sides--clenched hands that the rings bit into.
"He will go to her early to-morrow. And she"ll accept him, of course.
She"s never seen anyone else, the little fool."
She knew that she herself would have taken him, would have chosen him as the chief among ten thousand.
"She could have Temple. She"d be much happier with Temple. She and Eustace would make each other wretched. She"d never understand him, and he"d be tired of her in a week."
She had turned up the electric lights now, at her toilet table, and was pulling the pins out of her ruffled hair.
"And he"d never care about her children. And they"d be ugly little horrors."
She was twisting her hair up quickly and firmly.
"I _have_ a right to live my own life," she said, just as Betty had said six months before. "Why am I to sacrifice everything to her--especially when I don"t suppose she cares--and now that I know I could get him if she were out of the way?"
She looked at herself in the silver-framed mirror and laughed.
"And you always thought yourself a proud woman!"
Suddenly she dropped the brush; it rattled and spun on the polished floor.
She stamped her foot.
"That settles it!" she said. For in that instant she perceived quite clearly and without mistake that Vernon"s att.i.tude had been a parti-pris: that he had thrown, himself on her pity of set purpose, with an end to gain.
"Laughing at me all the time too, of course! And I thought I understood him. Well, I don"t misunderstand him for long, anyway," she said, and picked up the hair brush.
"You silly fool," she said to the woman in the gla.s.s.
And now she was fully dressed--in long light coat and a hat with, as usual, violets in it. She paused a moment before her writing-table, turned up its light, turned it down again.
"No," she said, "one doesn"t write anonymous letters. Besides it would be too late. He"ll see her to-morrow early--early."
The door of the flat banged behind her as it had banged behind Vernon half an hour before. Like him, she called a carriage, and on her lips too, as the chill April air caressed them, was the sense of kisses.
And she, too, gave to the coachman the address:
Fifty-seven Boulevard Montparna.s.se.